Fallen
by attackamazon
Summary: After Kirkwall, Hawke has to make some difficult decisions about herself, Anders, and what happens now.  The saga of what came after, told from various perspectives. Ch 7: The final chapter.  All things come to an end, and another hero makes an appearance
1. Broken

_After reading some of the other stories on this site, I feel like writing an epilogue to DAII should be a rite of passage or something. This story can be read as a continuation of the events in my first fic "Always". The POV switches between various characters, but it s mostly the story of Hawke and Anders and what came after The End. Feedback is welcome and savoured, as I'm probably going to turn this in as a creative writing project eventually. I have about five installments planned at the moment, but I'll continue writing until my inspiration runs out. _

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><p>And so it was done. A city ripped apart. The Chantry, and all inside, annihilated as neatly as if the hand of the Maker had reached down and plucked it from the ground Himself. A Knight-Commander turned to stone by self-inflicted magical corruption in front of her own templars. The image of it was seared forever into Aenora Hawke's mind.<p>

She felt so tired, so heavy suddenly, as if her bones had turned to lead. But she could not rest yet. There were still lives at stake, people who were depending on her. Cullen would delay the pursuit for as long as he could, if he could, but she knew it was temporary grace at best.

"We need to take ship." She heard herself say, though it sounded strange, as if it were someone else and not her at all speaking with her voice "The more miles we put between ourselves and Kirkwall, the better."

She did not look at the other's faces, but she could sense their agreement.

"We can be away within the hour." Isabella said, and Nora nodded. And so it was settled. No one spoke again until the creaking ferry landed at the docks and they hurried, carefully, towards Isabella's ship.

~~0~~

"Hawke…" Aveline said, hesitantly, stopping at the edge of the gang plank. She had wanted to say something sooner, but the time had not seemed right. Now was the last possible moment, and she was forced to take it. Hawke turned, and the look on her face broke Aveline's heart. In all the years she had known Hawke, through the hard, squalid first year in Kirkwall when both of them had had to do things they found distasteful in order to get by, through losing her sister to the Circle and her mother to an insane mage, through everything, Hawke had been a rock of endurance, able to keep her head even when the worst was going on around her. This was not the Hawke she had known and fought beside. She looked exhausted, unfocused. Everyone was tired and distracted after a battle, but the look on Hawke's face was deeper, and Aveline realized, painfully, what the difference was. She had never seen Hawke look beaten before.

It made what she had to say now even harder, but what else could she do? She faltered for a moment and opened her mouth to speak, but Hawke seemed to already have guessed what was coming.

"I know. Go find Donnic." She said, and then stepped back down the plank towards Aveline and clasped her arm the way that soldiers sometimes did, her tone softening, "Save who you can."

There seemed to be a double meaning in those words, but Aveline did not want to think about it now. She squeezed her old friend's arm in return.

"I will. I expect to hear from you when things have settled down some."

Hawke's smile did not seem to touch her eyes, but she pulled Aveline in and hugged her, the first time she had ever done so, and no doubt the last.

"I'll do my best." The Champion replied, as she drew back, adding before turning to start up onto the ship, "Go. Do what you can for Kirkwall. Have a passel of babies with your husband, and be happy."

"I will." She replied, and watched her friend disappear up the ramp, marking a moment she would remember for the rest of her life with silence. As she turned, hurrying back into the city, towards her husband and her duty to Kirkwall, she told herself that it would turn out alright. Hawke was the strongest person she knew. Hawke would come through this, and so would they all.

~~0~~

It had been a long time since Varric had been onboard a ship, and he wasn't sure he liked the way the deck was swaying under his feet. That was the least of his worries now, though. Isabella had taken charge as soon as they were onboard and her crew was in a frenzy of preparation. Anders had retreated to the stern where he would be out of the way and less noticeable for the moment. A smart move, considering that there was more than one person on the boat who would be happy to throw him over the side or hang him from the rigging right now. The others milled around disconcertedly, out of their element, trying to stay out of the way. It was Hawke he was worried about, though.

She was sitting on a bench that ran across the front of the poop where she had sunk down after coming onboard and had not moved since. The flurry of activity that was going around her seemed not to phase her in the least, as if she didn't notice, as if it was going on in a completely different world from the one she inhabited. Her eyes stared sightlessly at nothing in front of her, her gaze turned inward he guessed, her shoulders slumped. Blood had dried in barbaric patterns on her face, but she did not seem to notice. She looked…well, even he couldn't find words to describe it.

Varric would be the first to admit that he was not the leadership type, but his profession had taught him a good bit about how leadership worked. If they were going to have any chance of making it through what was to come, they were going to need Hawke. She was the only one that the entire group respected and would follow. If she crumbled now in front of everyone, there would be nothing left to hold them all together and they could not afford that right now.

Glancing around, he noted that their companions seemed not to have noticed Hawke's catatonic state yet, and so he sidled up to Bethany, who was talking softly to a small girl she had brought with them, a survivor of the slaughter at the Circle. He tugged the sleeve of her robe gently until she bent down low enough for him to whisper in her ear.

"We need to get Hawke below deck. Now." He told her, and she turned her gaze up towards her sister for a moment and then nodded.

As quickly and quietly as they could, they moved over to Hawke and Bethany whispered something in her ear. Between them, they helped her up and shuffled her down below and into one of the apparently empty bunks in the sailors' quarters. Isabella could work out the sleeping arrangements later. He helped Bethany strip off Hawke's blood-smeared armor, as it would have been too heavy for the mage by herself, and then excused himself. The less he saw of what was happening to his friend now the better, for Hawke's sake, when she recovered.

Until then, he thought, patting Bianca for reassurance as he made his way back up on deck, he would keep the restless natives at bay and try to think of what their next step should be. Just in case.

~~0~~

"No!" Nora cried, exploding from the sheets to sit bolt upright in bed, her face and hair drenched with sweat, panic written in her eyes. She had lain in a state of near-coma, unresponsive and un-waking, since they had brought her down below and put her into bed. When she had started to twitch and groan restlessly some hours earlier, Bethany had almost drug Anders down to see to her whether the others liked it or not, but she had decided to wait and see what happened.

"Shh, it's okay." Bethany said, moving quickly over to her sister, wrapping her arms around her trembling shoulders, "It was a dream. Just a dream."

It seemed to take a moment for Nora to understand what was happening, her eyes darting around the dim bunkroom in confusion, before her body sagged slightly and her breathing began to return to normal.

"Where are we?"

"Isabella's ship. It's alright, we're safe." She replied, as she stroked her sister's dark hair out of her face, and looked into her miserable eyes, "Are you alright?"

"I'm…" Nora replied, but did not finish the thought. She sighed heavily and pressed her hands to her forehead, "Have I been asleep long?"

She always did this, Bethany thought. She had never liked to talk about her own feelings, always preferring to move on to the next thing, to worry about other people's feelings and keep her own to herself. But that was for later.

"Almost two days." Bethany admitted, and added quickly, "You needed it, after what you've been through."

"The others…"

"…are fine. Sod them, Nora, I'm worried about you."

"Is that how they teach you to talk in the Circle?" her sister replied, with the faint specter of a smile, and Bethany grinned back.

"I've learned a thing or two since I've been away." She said, and then grew serious, "How are you really? How do you feel?"

Nora turned away and stared at the wall for a long time, as if the words had to travel upward from somewhere deep inside of her.

"Empty." She said, finally. Not sure of what to say, Bethany hugged her and felt her return the embrace. That was a good sign, at least, wasn't it? She pressed her sister gently back down onto the bed and lay down beside her like they had done when she was very young and Nora had been her protection against the monsters that lurked in the dark corners of their room. Only now, she supposed, she was the one who was protecting Nora and the monsters were inside her sister's head.

"Anders…"

"Fenris wanted to kill him, but Varric and Isabella broke it up. Merrill is sitting with him now. No one else will go near him."

Nora winced a little at the last statement and Bethany could only guess at what she was thinking.

"She always was sweet like that."

"What do you want to do now?"

"I don't know." Her sister replied, vaguely, without feeling.

"Varric says they're going to wait for you to make a decision."

"In case no one has noticed," Nora replied with a short, bitter laugh, "my decision-making skills are not at their finest right now."

"I wouldn't say that." Bethany replied, and at that moment, she noticed the tears that were starting to run down Nora's cheeks, her sister's expression wavering and crumpling with anguish. She had never seen her sister cry before, not even when they were children. It frightened her a little, but if anyone deserved to be able to cry right now, it was Nora.

"So many people…" her sister whispered, her voice thick with agony.

"No, Nora. You tried to stop it. Don't blame yourself."

"I'm still responsible. I didn't stop him, even when I began to suspect…" she broke off, and turned her face fiercely away, "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. You're human, you're not one of Varric's story-book heroes that never cry or make mistakes or get tired and fed up with it all."

"If I had done something different…if I had acted sooner or…"

"Stop it. You did your best. You didn't make Meredith crazy and you didn't make Anders possessed. You couldn't have known what was going to happen, and so you did your best. What else could you have done? What else can anyone do?"

"But I was their Champion." Nora replied, hollowly. Her tears had slowed now, her face set into a mask of regret, "I was supposed to protect them, and I failed. Nothing changes that."

Bethany was silent for a moment, in frustration. Nora seemed determined to take all the blame on herself. Another thing she was good at. How many times had Nora taken the punishment for something her younger siblings had done, so that she wouldn't have to snitch on them? And how many times had Mother placed the blame on her, the eldest, for not watching over Carver and Bethany well enough when something went wrong? It was natural, then, that Nora now felt like she had to absorb the responsibility for everything that had happened. But how could anyone live with that much guilt on their conscience?

"I don't care. You're my sister and I love you." She said, firmly, and felt Nora squeeze her hand, appreciatively, the tension in her body relaxing just slightly. And that was a start.

~~0~~

If there was a hell, Anders was in it. _I've ruined everything, _he thought, miserably, as he sat near edge of the quarterdeck, where Isabella could keep an eye on him, and stared out over the endless horizon. In the back of his mind, the part of him that was now indistinguishable from Justice told him that it had been justified…that without sacrifice, there can be no change, and that his actions now would save the lives of countless mages in the future and make way for a better Thedas. He had fully expected to be part of that sacrifice himself, had even welcomed it, but Nora had spared him. He hadn't expected her to do that. He still didn't exactly know why she did, but the reason he suspected made his heart leap with hope and made him want to throw himself over the side of the ship and hide in the muck at the bottom of the ocean at the same time.

He looked up briefly, noting that the cook was getting ready to dole out the noon meal and the sailors were congregating. Merrill had been good enough over the past few days to bring him food and talk to him, kindly, about meaningless things…the sky, the ocean, whether the cook's pet parrot could be taught Dalish or not. He was grateful, she really was a wonderful person, despite being a blood mage, but he couldn't really focus on what she was saying, and he could not bring himself to eat. Not while Nora was still down below somewhere, absent. Resting, her sister said, though he worried it was something worse. Fenris had nearly lost his composure entirely when he had offered to see if he could heal her, but Isabella had stepped in and demanded that there would not be any bloodshed on her ship that wasn't started by her, so it had come to nothing. He was beginning to worry that he had destroyed Nora, too, just as he had destroyed the Chantry and so many, many other lives. If that was the case, then he would do himself what each of the others wanted to do to him, whether they admitted it or not. He couldn't bear to live in a world that had him in it instead of Nora.

So, it was with a strange sensation buzzing in the back of his mind that he saw her emerge, a little shakily, from the hatch a moment or two later. Her sister helped her get her balance, it seemed she had not yet developed her sea-legs like the others, but she was standing on her own, walking, and that was a good indication that she was okay. She had taken a pounding in the last battle, and her face and arms were bruised and scratched, but his healer's eye did not detect signs of anything serious. The real damage, then, must all be inside.

The others approached her, hugged her, joked with her, relief evident on their faces. They loved her. How could you not? The question echo painfully in his chest, and he drew a sharp breath in, as if struck. He loved her, too. The only reason he had held off so long was because of her, because they were happy together in a way that he had never been before. But Justice had won out in the end…

No, that wasn't fair. He had agreed to the merging. He had agreed to Justice's urgings. Maker, he wanted her to look up at him, to see her face, know what she was thinking, but he was terrified of what he would see. He stayed where he was, both because he knew he did not deserve her attention and because he did not want to cause a scene. If she wanted to talk to him, she would, eventually.

He trained his gaze back on the horizon, so he would not have to see her. Even if he deserved every bit of it, he could not bear to inflict that torment on himself. He tried to think about what he would do now, if they didn't kill him after all. Would Nora…Hawke, he reminded himself, sharply. Her given name was a privilege that had been reserved only for her family and later for him and he no longer deserved it. Would Hawke turn him in? Maybe, and if so, he would go quietly. If she simply let him go…the Grey Wardens might take him back in, but he doubted it. No doubt every templar and Chantry cleric in Thedas would know his face soon enough, once the word spread, and his phylactery, if it had not been destroyed in the battle of Denerim, would be dug out and used to track him down. He was used to laying low, but there was nowhere he could go where the templars could not follow him now, except perhaps Tevinter and Justice would not agree to that. Even his tentative status as a Grey Warden would not protect him anymore.

A couple of hardtack biscuits and a twist of dried beef landed suddenly on the deck in front of him and he looked up, his heart shooting into his throat as he found himself staring into an achingly familiar pair of blue eyes. Hawke studied him for a moment, unmoving. She had always had a talent for sneaking up on him when he was lost in his own thoughts. It hurt to see how tired she looked still, how pale she seemed. Someone had cleaned and dressed her wounds, but he could see several on her arms and face that he knew she would bear as scars until her death. There was a look in her eyes that he recognized from his days with the Wardens; they called it the "thousand yard stare".

Hawke set a clay flask of what he guessed was water down beside the food and then returned her gaze to him.

"Eat." She said. It was the first word she had spoken to him since she had gone into that final battle, and he didn't know what to say. She watched him, unmoving, until he tentatively picked up one of the hard biscuits, broke off a piece and put it in his mouth. It tasted strongly of sawdust and salt, but his stomach clamored for it anyway, so he chewed. Apparently satisfied, she turned without a word and went back down to the main deck. He watched her go, stunned, wondering if he should have said something or if he should go to her now. No. It was enough to know she was still acknowledging his existence, that she still cared enough to look out for him as she looked out for everyone. If there was more to be said, it would be in her time, not his. He ate the rest of the food and felt a little better and dared to let himself begin to hope again. Maker help him.

~~0~~

Fenris was angry, but then that was hardly a change from how he had felt all the time over the last few days. Watching Hawke settle down to eat with Varric on one side and her sister and the child mage on the other, with Merrill fussing cheerfully around the edges, he struggled for control with a myriad of conflicting emotions.

On the one hand, he was relieved…no, that wasn't sufficient…he was _immensely_ relieved that Hawke was fine after all. Even though he had walked out on her like a fool when she so improbably desired him, even though she had sought comfort in the one person it galled him most to see her with, he still cared for her deeply. If she had truly been damaged through all this, nothing Isabella could have said would have stopped him from killing Anders, as he had once promised he would do. It still wasn't too late for that, if he could talk some sense into Hawke or her other companions.

Back at the Gallows, he hadn't been able to believe she had spared the abomination's life. What did the mage have to do before Hawke understood how dangerous and evil he really was? He was well-aware of Hawke's feelings on mages…her sister and father had been mages, after all, and seemed to have been relatively well-defended against the wiles of demons, so he could understand her complacency to the danger somewhat. But this…no sane person could forgive this.

He glared hatefully up at where the mage-abomination was sitting away from the others, eating the food that Hawke had brought him. It tore at him to see her go back to him, despite everything, even if only for a moment. Could Anders have influenced Hawke's mind somehow? He had not thought that the mage would stoop to blood magic, but there was nothing now that Anders seemed incapable of doing. He would have to talk to Hawke, to Bethany…even Merrill, who, ironically, would know the most about it…to confirm whether this was a possibility. Perhaps he had kept his silence about this unnatural relationship of hers too long. She had always been a good enough friend to speak honestly with him, even when she thought he was wrong. He had kept his feelings to himself for so long because she was happy. Perhaps he should do for her now the same service she had done for him many times before, especially now that there was the greatest need and the best chance of breaking the mage's hold on her.

The opportunity presented itself sooner than Fenris had thought it would. After the meal, Hawke gently extricated herself from the others, saying she wanted to get some air and clear her head a bit, before heading up towards the forecastle of the ship alone. Varric was distracted by relating some tale or other to the women and Isabella was busy with the business of the ship, and so the way was clear.

When he found her, she was standing near the front of the forecastle, arms folded across her chest, eyes closed. She was not smiling, exactly, but the care-lines on her face had smoothed and she looked, if not at ease, then not troubled either. He suddenly felt guilty for disturbing her. Before he could leave, though, she turned and looked at him, and he stopped, transfixed.

"Did you want something, Fenris?" she asked. He stared at her for a moment, fighting with himself for something to say.

"Are you…alright?" he asked, lamely, hesitantly. That was a fairly innocuous opening line, wasn't it? Her expression did not change. Maker, he was bad at this kind of thing. He should have just let her be. It had been a very long time since he had been alone with her, and he was now keenly aware of it.

"No." she admitted, "But…I am more alright than I was. I have high hopes of working up to being just okay by month's end."

He smiled, despite himself. She was still capable of teasing him, at least. The Hawke he loved was still there.

"Hawke, I…" he started, reconsidered, and decided to press on, "I am concerned for you. What happened back in Kirkwall with Anders…"

"Don't do this." she said, looking away from him. Her tone was soft, but he had seen the way her face hardened. He had never seen Hawke shrink from anything before now, and it set something inside of him ablaze. Was she still going to defend her mage even now? He seethed, fighting for control.

"You had to know something like this would happen someday." He replied, with more force than he meant, and felt a pang in his chest as he watched her lean forward, her hands gripping the railing of the ship so hard he could see her knuckles go white from where he stood, her body curling as if she were in actual physical pain. He was hurting her. But if she would not see, he would have to make her see for her own good.

"What would you have me do?" she asked, quietly, at last. She sounded more tired than angry. That was a good sign. Perhaps she would listen to sense.

"Anders is dangerous. He must be stopped."

"You mean execution."

"Can you deny that he deserves it?"

Silence.

"No." she replied, and he felt the hurt in the word as it left her mouth.

"If you cannot do it," he said, stepping closer to her, the electric feeling of victory coursing through his nerves. She _was_ listening to him, "then let me. I have less than you to regret."

She turned to him then, though without meeting his gaze, and his heart dropped.

"Anders crimes are also my own. Would you put me to the sword as well?"

For one strange moment, he thought it was a request, that she was asking for death. But, no, that could not be. He frowned, disturbed by the direction the conversation had taken.

"I would, Hawke, as much as I would hate doing it. If you were guilty. But you are not."

She nodded, as if this confirmed something she already suspected and moved towards him as if she were going to walk past, but instead laid a hand gently on his shoulder where she knew from experience it would not touch his marks and cause him pain.

"Then you are a better person than I am." She said, sadly, and she walked away from him without another word and without looking back.

~~0~~

"Hey-ho, it's a funny old life, isn't it?" Isabella sighed, later that evening, as she plunked a bottle of Antivan rum and two clay cups down on the table in front of Nora and took up a seat across from her at the map table in the captain's cabin, "At least I finally got you out on my ship, didn't it?"

"You know I don't drink." Nora replied, arching an eyebrow at her across the table. She loved all of her friends, but it was painful to see them walking on eggshells around her and worse still to see the many and different ways they were all suffering, too. Only Isabella seemed more like her old self, and Nora found that vaguely comforting.

"Well, then I think this is a fine time to start." The pirate captain replied, pouring out two shots, and tossing her own back as if it were water. Nora fingered hers, staring down at the dark amber-colored liquid, then sighed and raised it to her lips, downing it like her friend had.

"Andraste…" she gasped, coughing and spluttering as the liquid burned its way down her throat. Isabella's throaty laughter filled the cabin.

"Go easy, Hawke, you're an amateur." Isabella replied, amused, refilling both of their cups.

"So, what now?" Nora asked, still wincing from fiery after taste of the rum.

"I was going to ask you that very question."

"Where are we bound at the moment?"

"South. There are plenty of ports of call along the coast to choose from and I had been planning a cargo run to Denerim soon anyway."

Nora nodded and tried sipping the rum. It still burned, but in a pleasant, hazy way this time.

"I understand King Alistair is sympathetic to mages. Ferelden seems as good a destination as any."

"You don't have to go slogging off into smells-like-dog-land if you don't want to, you know." Isabella replied, and grinned at her, "I've always said I could use someone like you on my ship. Smart, capable, nicely shaped in all the right places…"

"Eyes up here, if you don't mind." Nora said, and found that she was smiling for the first time in days, "Anyway, I don't think you'd enjoy having a possessed apostate mage wanted by every templar in Thedas on your boat forever."

The captain cocked her head to the side, with an appraising look.

"You're going to stay with Anders, then?"

"I made it possible for him to do what he did. I'm responsible for him now." She replied and sighed, "Beyond that, I don't know."

"You want my advice?"

"Does it involve copious amounts of alcohol and sex acts I've never even heard of?"

"No, but I like where you're going. Continue."

"What's your advice?"

"If you love him, sweets, love him. To hell with what anyone else thinks." Isabella said, leaning over the table on her elbows, "But don't you ever trust him. Not ever. That's when they break your heart."

"I'll keep that in mind." Nora said, and then raised her cup, "To better days?"

"They'd have to be, wouldn't they?" the captain replied, raising her own glass, and tossing it back.

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><p><em>Thanks for reading. Feedback appreciated!<em>


	2. Getting By

_This piece should be slightly less dark than the first, I promise. :) Plenty of Varric and Merrill to even out the angst._

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><p>Isabella was right. Being at sea, and not in the hold of a cramped and wretched refugee ship, was oddly uplifting. It was as if she had dropped through the cracks of her old life entirely and found herself in a limbo of movement and space where time did not intrude. Decisions would have to be made, eventually, but Nora was not anxious to return to the old world of complications and strife any time soon.<p>

"Give me something to do." She said to Isabella the morning after awakening from her state of stress-induced torpor.

"Are you sure?" the captain had replied, skeptically, "Listen, sweets, I know you're not quite back up to top notch yet. As far as I'm concerned…"

"I need this." She replied, the determination palpable in her voice, and so she worked beside the sailors, lending her considerable strength where she could, letting her body take over while her mind rested and tried to knit itself back together again.

~~0~~

Merrill was thoroughly enjoying this sea-going business. It _was_ much different when you were on deck and not stuffed into a tiny room with your entire clan and the halla. There was an endless supply of new and interesting things to investigate and the sailors seemed amazed at her ability to navigate the complex rigging, though she found it much easier than the trees back home. _Home_, she thought, with a sigh. First, she had lost her clan…or rather her clan had lost her, she supposed …and now the Alienage, her home for the last six years, was gone as well. It hadn't been an especially nice place to live compared to the open countryside she had grown up in, but she had become fond of it over time. It was interesting to see the way the city elves lived and find the commonalities in their traditions and those of the Dalish. The eluvian was lost to her, too, and that was a blow, but she had decided to make peace with it. There was nothing that could be done about it now.

Anyway, she had turned the situation over in her mind a few times and realized that she _did _still have a home. Her clan had moved from place to place, never stopping too long in one spot. It was the people she lived with and loved that made it her home, not the places themselves. And so her home was still here with her, with Hawke and Varric and Isabella, even Fenris and Anders, though Fenris had barely spoken to anyone since his outburst a few days ago and Anders seemed to have retreated into himself almost entirely.

Anders had done terrible things, but he was still part of her little clan and so she did what she could to help him and sensed that he appreciated it. At least he had stopped pestering her about blood magic. Fenris, on the other hand, she could not get close to. He either lashed out at her with angry words when she tried to speak to him or simply got up and left. She was worried about both of them, but it was Hawke she worried about most. The woman before them looked like Hawke and sounded like Hawke, but different. More reserved. Something was missing and Merrill wondered what it was.

The sun was hot on the deck of the ship and the cook had brought a barrel of water and a dipper up on deck for the crew to keep them hydrated and free of the sun-sickness. While the men were taking a much needed afternoon break to sit in the shade of the fore- and afterdecks, drink water, and rest for a few minutes, Merrill spotted Hawke sitting against the side-rail of the ship and moved over to her, plopping herself down beside her friend.

Sweaty, with her shirt sleeves rolled up, a length of cloth tied around her head to guard from the sun, her skin already starting to tan, Hawke was starting to look just like the sailors and Merrill said so.

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you were a pirate like the ones Isabella talks about." She observed, good-naturedly.

"I don't think I'm quite that bad yet. I've got less tattoos and more clothes on." Hawke replied, smiling. Something was still off, but she seemed easier today, less fragile, and that made Merrill feel better, too, "Maybe I should consider a career change. Being a sailor doesn't seem like such a different life from being a soldier."

"Did you like being a soldier, then?"

"You do what you're told, you get plenty of exercise, your meals show up on time. You know who your friends are and who the enemy is. Things were…simpler…then."

Hawke's expression grew wistful and Merrill hurried to change the subject.

"One of the sailors told me there are fish that jump out of the water and fly around like birds. I've been looking for them, but I haven't seen any yet. Have you?"

"No, but let me know if you do. If we live in a world where fish can fly, then I should start taking some of Varric's stories more seriously."

"Do you think Isabella would let me keep one as a pet?"

But Hawke's attention had turned elsewhere, her eyes growing distant and tired again. Merrill followed her gaze to see Anders emerging from the hatch and making his way up to the quarterdeck. It was a shame really. They had seemed so happy together. Now, whenever Hawke looked at him, she looked so sad and Anders could barely look at her at all most of the time, though Merrill had seen him follow her with his gaze around the ship like a starving man being shown a meal just out of his reach.

"Why don't you talk to him?" she said, quietly, soothingly, "You want to, I can tell. Why don't you?"

Hawke sighed and leaned her head back against the rail.

"It's not that simple, Merrill."

"It is. All you have to do is get up and put one foot in front of the other, try not to trip over yourself, and then just open your mouth and say something. I like to start with 'hello'."

For a moment, Hawke was silent, but then the corners of her mouth turned up and she laughed, despite herself. It was good to hear.

"You're probably right." She said, a moment later, when she had finished, and then hefted herself up, as the sailors were starting to return to work, offering her hand to help Merrill up as well, "Thank you, Merrill. Let me know about those flying fish, okay?"

~~0~~

The nights had become cooler even in the few days they had been at sea and Varric was glad to find that the fine maritime tradition of drinking warmed grog in the evenings had not stopped since the last time he had gone traveling. The hurricane lantern he had borrowed off of Isabella turned out to be more or less useless to write by, and so he spent the evenings playing Wicked Grace or diamondback with Fenris and occaisionally Isabella. By his tally, the broody elf currently owed him most of his future life earnings.

He saw Hawke approach out of the corner of his eye a few minutes after Fenris called it quits for the night and sloped off to his bunk, but continued gathering up his cards and shuffling them a few times in preparation for sliding them back into their protective leather case.

"Why does he keep playing with you? I've never seen him win yet."

"Why do any of us keep playing, Hawke?" Varric replied, with wry humor, "It's the only game in town."

She dropped down across from him, setting a wood mug down on the deck beside her and rapped her knuckles gently on the boards in front of her just like any denizen of the Hanged Man.

"Lay 'em out, dwarf."

"Since when do you gamble?" he asked her, but he shuffled the cards in his own special way and began to deal them out, alternating between his pile and hers while keeping careful count of the cards in his head, "Or drink, for that matter."

"It seems to work well for you and Isabella. I thought I'd give it a shot." She replied, picking up her cards and frowning at them. Unique among the group, Hawke was the only one who had never really learned how to play Wicked Grace. Even Bethany could play a mean hand or two, but Hawke had never done more than watch. Easy prey, but Varric wasn't interested in fleecing her tonight.

"Alright, but you know you're playing havoc with my portrayal of you as a pure and virtuous Champion of legend, right?"

"Ha!" Hawke retorted, reaching for the coin purse at her belt, but Varric shook his head.

"I don't want your money."

"Now, that's not fair. You'll take Fenris' money but not mine? I thought we were friends."

"We are, that's why I'm not taking your money." Varric said, smiling.

"How am I supposed to learn to be a hardened salty dog like my new co-workers if I'm not allowed to gamble?"

"You really want to gamble?" Varric asked, seriously. Hawke nodded, taking a sip of her grog, her nose wrinkling at the taste. He wasn't sure whether this charade was funny or just sad, but he did know something had gone wrong with Hawke and he wanted to help fix it, "Alright, I'll tell you what. We'll play, but instead of gold, I'll bet you a favor. If you win, I owe you one, if I win, you owe me one. Sound good to you?"

"Let's do it. I already know what my favor is going to be."

So, they played. Draw, consider, discard.

"So," she said, looking up at him over her cards, as he shifted his own around in his hand for effect, "was this supposed to be the part of the story where I rally my rag-tag band of heroes and sally forth to certain victory over the forces of darkness?"

"What forces of darkness would those be, Hawke?"

He laid down a Knight, a Page, and a Cleric.

"I don't know." She said, and he saw a cloud pass over her face. She shook her head, discarding a card and drawing a new one, "I just thought it might be a better ending than this."

"Who says the story's over?"

"If that wasn't a finale we just went through, I don't know what is."

"Call this the sequel then."

She tentatively laid down a couple of Coins, and he dropped a Queen on his pile.

"Not much of a sequel, if you ask me. 'And then, after ruining everyone's lives, Serrah Hawke turned tail and ran away, leaving many dead and everything she had worked for in smoking ruins behind her' does not sound like the beginning of an epic tale."

"You just need vision. That's why you have me, to spruce up your stories for you. I was thinking more like: 'And then, after vanquishing Knight-Commander Meredith the Mad in a glorious battle for the ages, the valiant and merciful Serrah Hawke led her thoroughly dashing comrades onward in search of ever more wrongs to right and demons to slay.'"

He dropped a King onto the pile with the panache of a seasoned cheater and looked up solemnly at Hawke, who was staring silently down at the cards, avoiding his gaze.

"Full Court. Time to make good on that favor. Call."

"I've got nothing." She said, blandly, opening her hand to show him her cards, "So, what do you want me to do?

"Get better, Hawke. And leave the drinking and gambling to the professionals."

"That's two favors."

"I'll owe you for the second one."

She smiled at him then, the small crooked smile that was all Hawke, and tossed her cards on the discard pile, rising.

"You know what would make it even?" she said, before she turned to go. He cocked his head, waiting, "When you tell the story, don't put in the part where you beat me at cards."

"Anything for you, m'lady."

~~0~~

It was a clear night and the moon was half full, and Anders sat on the fantail at the rear of the boat staring at the turbulent wake that stretched out behind them as he tried to think of what should come next. Isabella had mentioned that they would be pulling into port in several days. He could slip away then. They would all, no doubt, be happier with him gone and it would neatly remove the problem of what to do with him, unless Hawke felt the need to track him down. He hoped that would not be the case. The worst thing that could happen was that he was immediately captured by templars, but he did not really expect that he had a long life ahead of him now anyway. If not the templars, then possibly bandits or slavers, or wild beasts. He could take care of himself…but life for a lone apostate was hard and he wasn't sure he had it in him now to do it all over again. If he managed it, it would be perhaps ten or twenty years before the Grey Warden taint overtook him and he would be forced to walk the Deep Roads or die a slow and agonizing death on the surface. There was no telling how fusing with Justice might have affected his lifespan.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid_, he thought to himself, with loathing. _You could be home in bed with Hawke right now. You could have done so many other things, but you had to do _this.

Had it been worth it? It was impossible to get news from out at sea. Surely word would spread quickly to the other Chantries and the Circles. When they finally made landfall, would it be to news of a great uprising among the mages or would it be to the news that the Right of Annullment had been universally declared for all the Circles and templars were now slaughtering mages wholesale? At that prospect, he felt the strange maddening seething of Justice in his mind and he knew that, whatever he thought, he could never be free of this task. Never.

A quiet step caused a plank to squeak behind him and he looked swiftly over his shoulder, alarmed. It was Hawke. She stopped, as if waiting for something, but he was frozen to the spot, staring up at her as if she were an apparition. Maker, she was beautiful, with the moonlight casting silver highlights on her hair and the curves of her body. His heart ached for her, for the empty place that she had filled in him. At least she seemed to be recovering a little. He had seen her working with Isabella's crew today and it appeared to have helped her some. Action had always been her way of coping with things that upset her. It was one of the ways they were similar.

She continued towards him and, without a sound, sat down beside him, just a few inches away. He could feel the heat radiating off of her skin and it made him long to be able to hold her the way he used to. As it was, he couldn't even look at her now. She was watching the dark ocean, her expression unreadable. His mind raced. He wanted to cry, he wanted to beg her forgiveness, or even throw himself into the ocean if it meant he would never again have to see her look at him the way she had after the explosion. It was a permanent part of him now, he saw it in his nightmares nightly, her face still illuminated by the horrific red glow.

"How are you?" she asked, after what seemed like an eternity. Her voice was quiet, like wind or the murmur of the ocean. He had expected her to yell at him, to ask him what in the bloody Void he thought he was playing at, to tell him coldly what was going to happen to him now. That she didn't, that she simply asked after his welfare, only made him feel worse. He started to lie and say he was fine and then stopped himself. He didn't want to lie to her anymore.

"I'm here." He replied, weakly. That was the best he could say.

"Did you eat today? Merrill said you hadn't been eating before."

"Yes." He said, barely a whisper and then closed his eyes. How could she be so calm? How could she sit there and ask him these questions, as if nothing had happened, as if it had only been a lover's quarrel for which they were going to make up. He clenched his jaw, bitterly, "You shouldn't worry about me, Hawke."

She turned towards him slightly at that. Her hair hid her eyes. He so desperately wanted to brush it out of her face, to kiss her, to somehow make it better. He told her he would hurt her someday. And he had. But she was still here. Why?

"You're calling me Hawke now?"

He paused, unsure of what to say. Did she want him to still use her name? Why? Why would she want that after everything that had happened?

"I thought…" he began, hoarsely, but could not complete the sentence.

"Anders," she said, slowly. It was both wonderful and terrible to hear his name on her lips again, "A lot has happened in the last few days. There are a lot of things we have to talk about. There are a lot of decisions that have to be made. Hard ones."

He felt as if all the blood in his body was draining down to his feet. _Here it comes_. He tried to prepare himself for the blow.

"None of that is going to be resolved tonight." She said, firmly, pausing slightly for emphasis before continuing, "So, what I think we should do right now is sit here for awhile together and look at the moon and think about it being a beautiful night instead of about what is going to happen or what has already happened. Can we do that?"

Anders couldn't believe his ears. In the back of his mind, he thought: _that is easy for you to say when you are not the one who might die_. But he knew that was wrong. He was a murderer and an abomination and she was still trying to reach out to him in the only way she could at the moment. And he would be an ungrateful fool not to be glad of that.

"Okay." He agreed, and she nodded and turned back to the ocean. A few moment later, when he felt her reach over and take his hand, he looked at the ocean and he looked at the moon and he thought about the woman sitting next to him and how, against all odds, he was the single luckiest man in history of Thedas.

~~0~~

Below in the crew quarters of the ship, Fenris lay awake, listening to the snores of the sailors from the other end of the long bunkroom and Merrill's gentle breathing from the bunk above him, and watching the door. Hawke had put in a full day's work today, despite protests that she needed to rest. He understood. The best medicine for the mind was to work the body, and Hawke was a warrior. She would not sit idle when there was work to be done. But she had not come to bed yet, and that worried him.

His mind kept going back to their conversation yesterday. He knew Hawke felt equally responsible for what Anders had done. To a certain extent, he might agree. She should have turned Anders in to the templars or put him down herself long ago. Love makes fools of us all, he thought, with more than a little bitterness. Despite all this, even he felt the amount of blame she seemed willing to take on herself excessive and that bothered him. Could Hawke be planning to take her own life?

Sliding silently out of his bunk, he padded carefully along the narrow aisle between bunks towards the door. Hawke was not well, that was apparent. He didn't think she would be the type to fall on her own sword in remorse, but grief made people do strange things. Perhaps her absence was because she could not sleep, but he felt compelled to make sure she was okay.

The moonlight turned his white hair silver as he emerged onto the main deck and looked around. Only a few sailors were awake at night, to ensure the ship's steady course and alert the rest of the crew to danger if necessary. He did not see Hawke anywhere. She was not on the forecastle where she had gone yesterday. There was no light coming from the crack under Isabella's door, so she was not sitting up late with the captain. He started up the poop towards the quarterdeck to see if she was keeping the helmsman company when he stopped dead.

Sitting there at the very stern of the ship, silhouetted in the dim light against the sea, were two figures side by side. One was Hawke…he would know her shape anywhere…and the other, he noticed with sudden and intense anger, was Anders.

Of course. The mage had elected to sleep above decks rather than in the communal quarters. What a fool he was to worry after her safety when all she had done was sneak away to see her abomination after all his warnings, after everything. Rage threatened to overwhelm him, rising in his throat like bile as he turned stiffly and made his way back down to the hatch. He could accept that she loved Anders, even if he found the concept bizarre and repulsive. He could accept that his own stupid mistakes had lost him the right to have a say in her choices. But he could not bear this. The Hawke he thought he knew would not stand for this. The only explanations were that she had either lost her mind entirely or she was somehow being controlled by the mage.

Even if it ruined what friendship they had left between them, he was going to save Hawke from Anders and Anders was going to pay for what he had done to Kirkwall _and_ to her. He swore it.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks for reading! Feedback is greatly appreciated!<em>


	3. Secrets

_Just a note to say that I may have played a little fast and loose with the rules of magic for this world in the latter part of this piece. I couldn't find any solid information about what would have happened in a scenario like the one I imagined, so I had to make an educated guess based the way the mechanics seem to work in the game. That it works well in bringing about a major shift in Hawke and Anders' relationship in the story is also nice and helpful. So, I hope you enjoy it. And if you don't...the pink plot bunnies made me do it._

* * *

><p>"Very good!" Bethany said, smiling broadly as her pupil correctly spelled out the hardest of the vocabulary words they were learning. Meriane or Merie, as she was more often called, seemed to be holding up well, despite everything. Children were remarkably resilient, or so her father had often said. The six year old had come to the Circle a few months before, but was already used to the daily flow of life there, so Bethany tried to keep the child's routine as stable as possible to make things easier.<p>

Magical training was impractical on board the ship, both for reasons of space and company, but Merie was not really old enough yet for the serious study of magic anyway. For the younger students, the main focus was to give them an education and teach them to control their magic so it would no longer manifest spontaneously. So, they worked on spelling, they did mathematics with an abacus that Isabella kept for navigational calculations, she invented exercises as needed. Varric even contributed stories about the history of Thedas, with only a few embellishments, and Merrill kept the girl occupied by teaching her some of the songs and games that Dalish children played.

At night, the solemn, blonde girl snuggled against her, like a warm, delicate bird, and Bethany found herself feeling more and more maternal towards the child, which was both pleasant and painful. As far as she knew, Merie had no living parents. In the months since she had become Bethany's charge, the girl had never mentioned or mourned any family. The templars who brought her reported that she had been turned in by a stranger, who had seen her wandering about his home street for several days, but had only grown suspicious after he had seen her pick up a puppy whose leg had been snapped under an ox-cart and set it down again, completely healed and wiggling. The girl would not speak of it, but clung to Bethany with such ferocious attachment that Bethany supposed she was now the child's surrogate family.

"Bethany." A cold voice said, behind her. Merie looked past her and then hid her face in her hands shyly, peering out warily through her fingers at Fenris, who was standing stiffly a few feet away.

"Fenris." She replied, just as coolly. Though her sister seemed to have a rather strange and more or less stable friendship with the marked elf, Bethany could really do without his company and the feeling seemed to be mutual. She couldn't imagine what he wanted now, especially since he had been extra broody and unpleasant lately.

"When you have a moment, may we speak?"

She gave him a sharp, wary look, and then turned back to her charge.

"Merie, why don't you go ask Merrill to tell you some more stories about the Dalish?"

The girl, relieved, quickly scampered away, and Bethany, quite honestly, wished she could do the same. But, she sighed and stood, turning to Fenris as she crossed her arms over her chest.

"Yes?"

Something was going on behind those dark green eyes, but she couldn't tell what. Fenris seemed to be regretting this conversation as much as she was…or, she thought, trying to be more charitable, maybe he was just trying to find something to say that wasn't patently offensive for a change.

"I know that you are…not like many of the mages we have met." He began, and she rolled her eyes.

"Fenris, unless you are about to confess your undying love for me or something, get to the point."

He hesitated, with an odd, affronted look, but then his brow knit again, and he continued.

"I would like to know what the Circle taught you about blood magic. What the signs are, how its effects can be detected in another."

"Why?"

He seemed to grapple with the question and she narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

"Leave Merrill alone, Fenris. You know as well as I do that she hasn't done any blood magic lately. She told me herself. Not since what happened to her clan."

"You place an inordinate amount of trust on the word of a professed blood mage." The elf remarked, dryly, "But I'm not talking about Merrill. I simply want to know, for my own information."

"I would think recognizing a blood mage would be fairly obvious. Just look for someone with lots of scars and bloody wrists and a staff. If they're sacrificing a virgin or kicking babies, then it's a sure thing."

"Do not make light of this." He said, crossly, "If blood mages were so obvious, then the massacre at the Ferelden Circle would not have been able to happen. The Templars would surely have detected it and put a stop to it early."

Bethany sighed. Whatever was bothering Fenris, he wasn't going to talk about it directly and he wasn't going to leave her alone until she told him what he wanted to know.

"There are ways to detect a blood mage, but most of them are secret. The templars don't want mages to know how their methods can be foiled. I do know that blood mages are said to give off a certain aura that can be seen through magical means. I've been told that sometimes the templars can detect blood magic in the mages own blood if there is a question, but I think it must be difficult to do or require some special circumstances. Otherwise they would simply line us up and bleed us once a month to make sure we were all being good children."

"And if a blood mage is already in control of another person's mind…how can you tell?"

"You can't. That's the point." Bethany said, frankly, "But I suppose if the person is normally all smiles and kittens and then suddenly tries to burn down an orphanage, that might be a good indication. Fenris, why do you want to know all of this?"

"As I said, for my own information." He replied, thoughtfully, and she could tell his mind was now further away, "Thank you. I have a lot to think about."

He turned away, leaving Bethany staring after him distrustfully. Why did she get feeling that he was plotting something and that she was going to regret this little conversation?

~~0~~

Anders was feeling better than he had since the battle. He still kept a low profile. His presence still seemed to make the others uncomfortable, but they weren't avoiding him entirely now…except for Fenris, but that was the best he was going to get on that score…and that was an improvement. More importantly, Nora was speaking to him again, and that was what mattered to him the most. They had said only a little to each other last night, but she had held his hand for a long time in the darkness and that gave him hope that everything would be okay, that she still loved him and they could make it work.

There was so much he wanted to know, though. With the threat of imminent demise or abandonment seeming less likely, he had to think more about the future. What happened in Kirkwall was just the first stepping stone to true freedom. No one could ignore the issue any longer, but there would be fighting, there would be war between mages and the Chantry. There was even the possibility of an Exalted March being declared, but it would be hard to predict how the Divine would react. In the days before the final conflict, it seemed even the templars were beginning to realize something was dreadfully wrong with the current system. He took that as a good sign.

It was impossible to know what to do until they had more news, but he knew that he wanted to keep fighting. He had set tender to the powder keg, though perhaps he had been wrong in his methods, so how could he not take part in the coming war? Even if it was only a small part, he wanted to be there, to see it.

"You're looking thoughtful." Merrill said, cheerfully, approaching him as he sat darning ripped sail cloth, sealing the holes with neat surgical stitches. Without his clinic or his books, he felt useless, but he couldn't sit idle today. He supposed it was a good sign that Isabella was willing to trust him with a needle, "But you're smiling this time, so they must be good thoughts again."

"I suppose they are." He admitted, as she perched herself on a crate nearby, swinging her long legs. He liked Merrill. On the whole, she was a good person, just dangerously naïve. The death of her Keeper had sobered her a great deal, especially after Nora was forced to intervene to keep her own clan from killing her. He had been angry at Nora at first for agreeing to help the elf girl with her silly mirror obsession, thinking that it only encouraged her use of blood magic, but Nora had countered that not helping her would push her further away and that would be even more dangerous because there would be no one there to help her or show her a different way. He loved that quality in Nora, but it was frustrating beyond belief sometimes.

"Did you and Hawke make up?' Merrill asked, brightly, "Is that why you're happy?"

Maker, the elf did say whatever was on her mind.

"We're talking. That's enough for me."

"Good! I told her she should."

He looked up at Merrill, appraisingly. How could a blood mage be so unflinchingly positive all the time? Blood mages were said to be monsters, but if Merrill was a monster, she was the most well-disguised monster he'd ever seen. But then he was both an abomination and a healer, as well. It was all very confusing and something he never been able to work out to his satisfaction. Then again, maybe she had learned her lesson. Maybe the Keeper's sacrifice had not been in vain after all.

"What are you going to do now, Merrill?" he asked her, suddenly.

"Oh, I was thinking about climbing up to the crow's nest. You can see for miles and miles up there…"

"No, I mean, what are you going to do now that we've left Kirkwall."

She cocked her head at him as if it were an odd question.

"I hadn't thought about it. I suppose I'll keep following Hawke."

"Really? You don't want to find the other Dalish?"

"I don't know. Maybe eventually, but I like it here. I like helping Hawke and listening to Varric's stories and watching Isabella cheat at cards. It reminds me of when I was living with my clan, only the ship isn't being pulled by halla and we're not speaking Dalish."

"You think of us like a clan, then?" Anders asked, amazed. He had never thought about it that way before, "I…suppose I can see that."

"Merrill?" a rough voice said, and they turned to see Fenris walked down from the quarterdeck, 'I was…"

The tattooed elf stopped short as his eyes met Anders. Apparently Fenris hadn't noticed him, hidden as he was by the pile of crates that Merrill was sitting on. His face twitched in a venomous expression, and Anders could see his hand clench and unclench, no doubt wishing his fingers were closing around Ander's beating heart. He hadn't forgotten the first night on the ship, when it had taken Isabella, Varric, and several large crewmen to keep the elf from killing him right there on deck.

Merrill seemed just as surprised by the intrusion as Anders was, and didn't respond immediately. The look on Fenris' face was so nakedly violent that he supposed she might be afraid to say anything. At that moment, he dearly wished he had his staff with him.

"Never mind." The Tevinter elf growled, abruptly, turning sharply and stalking away. There was something in his eyes in that split second before he left. Anders wasn't sure whether it was pain or murder or both.

~~0~~

"You sure you want to do this, sweets?" Isabella asked, seriously, as Hawke sat across from her in her cabin, her expression unusually peaceful. The last couple of days had been good for her friend. The color was coming back into her cheeks. She was smiling again, though the weathervane could turn just as quickly in the opposite direction at times. Still.

"It's the right thing to do."

"Right is a dagger that's cut both ways." She observed, "Is it what you _want_ to do or do you feel it's something you _have_ to do?"

Hawke thought about this for a moment.

"Both, I think."

"And the others?"

"…are perfectly capable of making their own decisions." Hawke said, the corner of her mouth turning up in a crooked smile, "I'm no one's leader anymore, Isabella. Effective immediately, I'm firing myself from the post. I wouldn't turn down company…but I expect you'd be the last person looking to take up a life inland."

"You don't have to go that far. My offer still stands. You've got a position open here." She replied, and grinned impishly, "Several, in fact."

It was nice to hear Hawke, laugh.

"Thanks, but I don't think I'm cut out for the pirate life. I'm sworn off drinking, gambling, and whoring, which I understand puts me at a distinct disadvantage. Alas, my dreams of becoming a hard-eyed corsair like in Varric's stories are sadly dashed."

It was Isabella's turn to laugh this time.

"I'm going to miss you, when you go, Hawke. You do make things interesting."

They sat quietly for a moment and then she looked up, trying to read the expression on the former Champion's face.

"You're going to tell them tonight, then?"

"That was the plan."

"Does Anders know?"

"That was my next stop after you. Not that I'm giving him a say in the matter at this point."

"Could get ugly. Things have been…tense…lately." She said, carefully, thinking of the nasty scene the night that they had set sail. It had taken her awhile to talk Fenris down after that. The elf had kept largely to himself ever since, angry, but she had got a promise out of him to leave the idiot mage alone until Hawke could make a decision. She had a feeling that Fenris wasn't going to like this decision.

"I'm taking your advice for once. 'You can't change the weather, just the tack of your sails', isn't that what you say?"

"Just take care it's not a hurricane you're tacking into."

"That's why I'm glad I've got you, Isabella. I believe hurricanes are your specialty."

~~0~~

The sun was setting into the sea in a glorious blaze of colors, casting a yellowish glow over the ship and its occupants. Fenris tried to savor it, to take his mind off what he knew was to come. Hawke had asked her companions to meet together after the evening meal and he suspected, with a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach, that he already knew what she was going to say.

As he surveyed the faces that were gathering on deck, he thought about each of them, people he had known now for nearly seven years of his life. He could not say that they were friends, at least not all of them, but they were…comrades. They had shed blood together, protected each other. Even the abomination had healed his wounds before. It was unfortunate that it must end this way, for he had a feeling that tonight was the ending or the beginning of the end, but it could not be helped. The wheels had been set in motion long ago and it was time something was done.

Hawke came last, seeming strangely tranquil this evening, and stationed herself in between Isabella and Varric, completing the circle. He felt most sorry for her. She had been a rock, a beacon of sense and good judgement tempered with compassion. He only regretted that her compassionate side had been so thoroughly twisted that it obscured her other qualities.

"I'm sure most of you are wondering what comes next." She said, getting the meat of the matter as she always did, once they were settled, "I confess I've been at a loss myself."

_Go on,_ he thought, feeling his heart begin to pound, the blood rushing through his temples, _go ahead and say it._

"I'm sure I don't have to tell you that we're in a difficult situation. We don't know what we're going to find when we make landfall."

Several eyes glanced towards Anders, but he looked down at the deck in front of him, face expressionless. _He already knows what she's going to say_, Fenris thought, his lip curling in contempt and anger. _Of course he does._

"You all are family to me. We've all seen each other at our very best and at our very worst. There is not a one of you standing here now that I am not honored and humbled to call my friend."

"You sound like you're trying to say 'goodbye', Hawke." Varric said, with diplomatic wariness. She paused for a moment, as if gathering her thoughts.

"I don't want to keep you in suspense about my plans any longer than necessary." She continued, "I have talked to Isabella a great deal and, once we are past Denerim, I plan to leave and travel inland for a time. I have a feeling that being in my company will become more dangerous soon than it previously has been. For that reason, I cannot ask you all to follow me."

Fenris let those words sink in and was surprised to find how much they still stung. The irony of having left Hawke before only to feel pained when she, in turn, left him was not lost on him. But the time for that was past. Was she going to get to the real point? That she might not address it at all, that she might try to slide past it without mention made the situation all the worse, because they _he _would have to force the confrontation.

"No!" Merrill gasped, wide eyed, "Hawke, no. You said yourself, we're family. We have to stay together."

"Hawke, are you sure about this?" Varric said, frowning. Even he was disturbed by the news. Isabella said nothing, and by this Fenris knew that she, also, had already known of Hawke's plan.

"Rubbish." Said Bethany, matter-of-factly, "I'm coming with you."

There was a chorus of assent. Hawke held up her hands, for silence.

"I've told you my plans." She said, when the others had stopped talking, "I think it's for the best, but you are all free to do as you wish. You always have been. I'm grateful that you have stuck by me for so long. But I am no longer fit to lead anyone, and being seen to be my friend will not be safe in the future. I think you all know that."

"So it'll be dangerous." Varric said, spreading his hands with a shrug, "How is that different exactly from nearly every day of the last seven years of our lives?"

"This isn't like the jobs we did in Kirkwall, Varric, where you can go home at the end of the day. It's going to be hard. I might have to pick up and move on a moment's notice."

"Sounds exactly like our happy childhood to me." Bethany quipped.

"I'm good at moving!" Merrill said, nearly dancing with eagerness, "Hawke, I won't be any trouble, I promise."

Hawke stared at the three of them in consternation. The saccharine sweetness of the whole thing would almost be comical, Fenris thought with disgust, if it wasn't such a farce.

"Face it, Hawke, you're stuck with us." Varric said, smiling, claiming victory.

It was all too much. Fenris had had enough. He cleared his throat and straightened up, staring directly at Hawke.

"And what about the mage?" he asked, coldly. Everyone turned to him and then to Hawke. She turned and looked at him for a long moment and then took a deep breath.

"Anders will be coming with me." She said. Even the ocean seemed to stand still.

"Is that your idea or his?" Fenris remarked, feeling his anger rising again, boiling up inside of him.

"Fenris…" Isabella said, lowly, a warning tone in her voice.

"No, I think it's a question that we all should consider for a moment." He said, angrily. Anders was standing upright now. His hand had wandered to his staff. Good. Let the abomination try to get the first shot in, and show his true colors. Fenris stepped forward, scowling as he looked between each of them, pointing at Anders "Have you not asked yourselves why it is that this…filth…continues to exist? You could float this ship in the amount of innocent blood he's spilt. And still he lives. Why?"

"I think you need to tone it down a bit, Broody, you're starting to spit." Varric began, but Fenris cut him off, turning his gaze to Hawke, who had not moved since he began speaking.

"We all know Hawke. We know her as a good woman, a _just_ woman. So, tell me, does it not seem strange to you that, standing among the ruins of one of the most heinous murders in all of history, she decides not only to spare the murderer's life, but let him go free and actually _assist him in escaping_?"

"Fenris…" Hawke started. There was a pained, almost desperate tone her voice, and it nearly sent him over the edge. His scowl deepened and he shook his head.

"No. I tried to reason with you, Hawke, but I see now that that is impossible. Because of this." He growled, turning to Anders. There was fear in the mage's eyes, but also calm. _He knows_ _what I'm going to say_, Fenris thought, taking a step forward, _and he doesn't care._

"Fenris, listen to me." Hawke said again, slowly. It cut him to the core to hear his name spoke by her that way, but it was necessary.

"I won't listen to you defend this demon anymore. It is beneath you. It sickens me to hear it."

"I don't deny what Anders has done." She continued, despite him, "But, unwittingly or not, I aided him. And so the crime falls on my head, perhaps even more heavily for my incompetence. If you would see someone punished for this, Fenris, if that is what it will take to even the scales, then let it be me."

"That is a lie that _he_ has told you!" Fenris shot back, seething. He was yelling now. They were all staring at him, nervously, as if he were the dangerous one. He turned back to Anders with a hate-laden glare that felt hot enough to melt steel. The time for talking was over.

In two steps he crossed the distance between him and the abomination, as a flurry of movement erupted among the party. Anders reached for his staff, Merrill screamed, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Isabella draw her daggers. It did not matter, they were all too late, and if they killed him, then he die knowing that he had taken the abomination with him. Out of the world, out of Hawke's life, for good. The marks on his skin burned like radiant ice as he felt his body change and plunged his fist towards the center of Anders chest, even as the mage's own eyes began to crackle an eerie, otherworldly blue. Justice. How poetic.

At the last possible moment, a figure moved in between him and his hated foe, but it was too late to pull back the blow. A force like an explosion, a soundless burning star of blue-white light, blotted out the world around him. He had felt nothing like it before. It was as if he were being bled, as if his body was being forcibly drained of its life energy through the burning lyrium markings in his flesh. He roared in pain and vengeance denied, and then it was over.

~~0~~

"Nora!" Bethany screamed, losing the concentration on the spell she was about to cast as she saw her sister dart between the two men, a dark silhouette between the lightning bolt arcs of Justice and the lyrium glow of Fenris' tattoos. In that instant, with sickening certainty, she knew that Nora was going to die and she was powerless to stop it.

What happened next, however, she would never forget as long as she lived. Almost the instant that Fenris' fist would have entered Nora's body, a powerful flash of light radiated in a nova of force from her sister's body. It moved through the men on either side of her and hit Bethany like a physical blow, knocking her back, as if the Veil had snapped shut inside of her, as if her blood had stopped flowing for just a moment.

She had felt that once before, back at the Circle. A magical duel between novices that should have been merely a training exercise had become a heated fight. A templar had had to step in. It was the same feeling…the sickening, disorienting feeling of being suddenly cut off from everything. _No,_ she thought to herself_, no, that isn't possible…_

Merrill was weeping softly nearby, but Bethany could not take her eyes off the scene in front of her. Nora stood, unwavering, like a stone statue. Several feet behind her now, Anders stood blinking, the look on his face indescribable. Fenris stood in front of her, his arm still outstretched, his fist poised over Nora's heart as if frozen in the act of striking her. His markings were dormant. His eyes were wide with fear and confusion.

For a moment, no one moved. Fenris stood back, his gaze unmoving. The only sound was of the ocean and creak of the rigging and Merrill sobbing.

"How did you do that?" Anders demanded, his tone rising, his face creased in fear and the beginnings of anger. Of course. Anders had mentioned before that he had been a Circle mage himself at one time. He understood, just as she did, what had just happened, "Nora! How did you do that?"

"I think everyone here needs to take a deep breath and step back a little." Varric said, trying to be the sensible one, but Bethany could tell that he was shaken, too. Bianca hung, almost forgotten in his hands.

"Where did you learn to Dispel?" Bethany asked, trying to keep her voice calm, though she could hear the quiver in her own words.

"I think you know the answer to that already, sister." Nora replied, quietly.

"No." Anders said, shaking his head in disbelief, stepping away from her as if she were unclean.

"You're a templar?" Bethany probed, hesitantly, and saw Nora flinch at the word.

"I've never taken any vows." Her sister replied. Her voice was flat, resigned. It was frightening to hear. She sighed, "But I have trained in templar abilities for some time now."

"Maker…" Anders groaned, staring. He looked as if he were about to be ill, "The whole time you were…when we…"

"No, it's not like that." Nora replied, quickly, turning towards him, "After we killed Ser Alrick, when you nearly killed that girl, I knew that something had to be done."

"So you joined them?" he yelled at her. Bethany stepped forward, protectively, though even she was afraid to get too close. She could still feel the reverberations of the magical annulment in the Veil.

"What did you do?" she asked, softly.

"I couldn't turn you in." Nora said, though Bethany knew this was directed at Anders, "I loved you too much. And I believed your cause was just. But I couldn't just stand by and let it happen again. I might not be able to pull you back into yourself next time."

She paused, trying to collect herself, to stabilize her voice, before continuing.

"I went to Cullen and asked him to train me, off the books. I told him that I often dealt with abominations in my work for the city. If he suspected the real reason, he was good enough to keep it to himself."

"But the lyrium…" Bethany asked, frowning.

"I knew I couldn't afford to become addicted. Even Cullen didn't know how the templar lyrium was prepared. He gave me just enough to awaken my awareness of the Fade so that I could begin to train, and then I learned what I could without it." Her expression grew pained, "Which turns out to be a surprising amount."

"Surely he didn't teach you everything."

"No. Cullen is a good man. He takes his vows seriously. I couldn't ask him to bend them any more than he already had. What was left to learn, I pieced together from Thrask and that retired templar Samson." She looked up at Anders then, sadly, "You were never supposed to know. I had hoped I would never have to use what I had learned."

She turned slightly back to Fenris.

"And now you know why I told you that Anders' crimes were mine and why I _am_ guilty, perhaps even more so. I made myself responsible…for Merrill's blood magic and for Anders. I could have stopped either of them at anytime. But I failed in my responsibilities, both to protect them and the people they might hurt. And so the deaths that you count to them are rightfully mine. Because I did nothing to stop them."

"I can't listen to this anymore." Anders stammered, as if disoriented. He started to hurry away towards the stern of the ship, but ran for the guard rail instead, retching into the ocean. Fenris was silent.

Bethany watched as Nora turned, without another word, walked mechanically to the hatch, and disappeared below decks. The sun sank below the horizon in perfect silence.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks for reading! Feedback is appreciated and savoured.<em>


	4. My Enemy's Enemy

The mood on the ship was decidedly subdued the following day. Varric had the least to fear from either mages or templars, being a dwarf, and so had never paid much attention to their particulars over the years. Even he could see that there was something more in this turn of events than met the eye. So, Hawke had been hiding a templar skirt all these years. An interesting touch, and one that he would almost certainly work into a story one day. On a boat with a significantly higher mage population than average, however, it didn't quite have the spin they needed.

Anders was taking it the hardest. When Varric had tried to joke with him about it, pointing out the irony in the situation, sleeping with the enemy and all, the mage had just sighed and gone further inside himself. It was a rare day when templar jokes didn't get a rise out of Blondie. Fenris was down in the hold, snarling at anyone who got close. Merrill had climbed up to the crow's nest the night before and had apparently slept up there. Climbing was not an exercise traditionally engaged in by dwarves, and so Varric had to trust that she would be okay. She would come down when she was ready.

Hawke was back at work with the crew, but even she would not speak about it.

"Let it be, Varric." She said, shaking her head, with a sigh.

"Clue me in, Sunshine." He said to Bethany later, as she was washing and re-braiding Merie's hair, "I know templars and mages are about as friendly as dogs and cats, but from what I saw, Hawke's little trick saved a couple of lives back there."

"You wouldn't have felt it, so you don't know." She replied, "A mage's connection to the Fade is always open. You get used to it; it's part of you. What Nora did was force all those connections temporarily closed. It would be like stopping your heart from beating. It's a horrible feeling. It's one of the most frightening things a templar can do to a mage."

"Seems to me it's better than having Broody wiggling his fingers in your ventricles, though."

"Yes." Bethany replied, "It's hard to explain, Varric. When I was in the Circle, I met some good templars who seemed to care about the mages, but I also met some very bad ones as well. If the templars decide they want to hurt you, they can hurt you badly, and there's nothing you can do. That's what it means for a mage to meet a templar. You feel…helpless."

"This is Hawke we're talking about."

"I know. It makes me nervous, but I know my sister. I do think Anders is overreacting a bit." She said, and frowned, "They're losing each other. It's hard to watch."

"As tragic romances go, it does seem to be heading in the wrong direction."

Bethany shook her head, tied off Merie's braid, and wrapped her arms around the little girl in front of her, laying a kiss on top of her head, thoughtfully.

~~0~~

"Careful, your face will stick that way."

Anders looked up to see Hawke's sister approaching from around the side of the quarterdeck. None of them had escaped with much more than the clothes on their back, and Bethany had tucked her stuffy Circle robes up into her belt and tied her long sleeves up above her elbows with strips of cloth. It was an odd thing to see. She put a hand on her hip and gave him a look that he had seen before, from both sisters.

"Or has it already?"

"I don't want to talk about it, Bethany." He said, shaking his head, knowing what she was here to discuss.

"I'm sorry, I don't think I asked what you wanted." She said, in the way of bratty younger sisters, and dropped down at the edge of the fantail, dangling her bare feet over the side between the slats of the railing. He had begun to think of Hawke's little sister as something of his own as well, before she was taken by the Circle. It was good to see her again after all these years, her spirit unbroken by incarceration. Right now, however, when he wanted to be left alone, was not the time.

"You know, you always seemed so sincere back when we first met you. It's too bad you turned out to be such a hypocrite."

He sighed, and pressed his hands to his temples.

"You don't understand."

"I understand more than you want me to."

"You saw what she is…"

"Quite honestly, Anders…I'd take a templar over an abomination any day. And if I had someone like Nora in my life, I wouldn't care."

He lapsed back into silence, feeling her eyes boring into him.

"Go talk to her."

"Bethany…"

"I'm tired of this, from both of you. Go talk to her, find out if you can fix all this between you or not, or I will wait till you're asleep and pluck every single feather out of your coat and set them on fire."

He had to smile a little at the threat, though he was not exactly sure she was kidding. But, he knew she was right. He had been thinking about it since last night and was ashamed of his initial reaction. He hated templars. When he was in the Ferelden Circle, he had seen mages beaten, raped, and tormented by templars, who were rarely, if ever, punished. He would never forget that. But Nora was not a templar. He had seen her protect mages countless times, both from harm and from being found out and taken to the Circle. No real templar would do that.

And what she had done, she had done because of him, it seemed. To keep him from hurting someone, like he had nearly hurt that little girl. Guilt raked at him. And it had saved his life. There were so many times when she could have used those talents over the years to harm him, but the first time she used them in his presence, it was to save his life. And here he was acting like an ungrateful bastard. What could he possibly say to her, though, after all of this?

"Do you really think she would want to talk to me…after the way I've behaved?"

"It's Nora. Nora would probably forgive the darkspawn if they asked nicely and promised not to go killing any more people."

He nodded, and rose, trying to decide on an approach that would not sound too pathetic. Before he turned to go he looked down at her, with a wry smile.

"You wouldn't really set my coat on fire, would you?"

"I grew up with a twin brother. That's only the beginning of the things I can do to you."

~~0~~

The bulk of the work was over for the day, and Nora drank deeply from the dipper at the water barrel and poured a small amount of the water, precious onboard a ship, over her face. Salt from her sweat and from the sea air had crystallized in her eyebrows, and she pulled off the rag she had bound her hair back with and wiped it off, shaking her hair out and letting the breeze wick the dampness away. If there was one thing she truly missed about the mansion in Kirkwall, it was being able to take a bath regularly.

She turned, stretching out the soreness in the neck and back, and stopped. Anders was approaching. He looked uncertain, wary. She knew that expression well. It was the same way he used to look at her all those years ago during the first tentative steps of their relationship, as if she would disappear into a puff of smoke at any moment. He stopped a few feet away from her and, with an embarrassed shuffle, looked into her eyes. She had always loved his eyes. They reminded her of warm amber. You could sense the kindness in eyes like that. When was the last time she had been able to look into them like this?

"I think we should talk." He said, finally. She nodded her agreement and followed him as he turned to walk up to the forecastle. Past the bosun's station, near the prow of the ship where there the fewest people were likely to be at any given time, Anders stopped and turned to her.

"I should have thanked you last night.' He began, "I…"

"You're welcome." She replied, quietly, when he faltered. He seemed flustered, as if searching for words. She wanted to tell him that she understood, that it was okay. But it would be better just to let him say whatever it was he needed to say.

"I wish you had told me." He said, finally.

"I couldn't. There was too good a chance you would leave, and then you would have been alone."

He nodded, a pained expression on his face.

"How long were you…training?"

"Three years." She replied, frankly. There was no reason to hide anything anymore, "It was hard…keeping it from you. I would never have used it to hurt you. I hope you know that."

"I know. I shouldn't have reacted the way I did. It's just that…what you did…you know my history with the templars."

"I don't blame you. I have an idea of what it must feel like for mages, and you were taken by surprise. As for the templars, there are so many things I wish I could have told you before now that might have made a difference. Things that even the templars don't know themselves, for the most part."

"Will you tell me now?"

He seemed sincere. She bit her lip for a moment, considering. When she had asked to be trained, she had not really understood what it would mean. Cullen had tried to dissuade her from attempting it without the support of the Order, but had relented in the end out of friendship. She could never have imagined the appalling secret she would uncover as she was learning. Not in a hundred years.

"You know that templars take lyrium."

"Yes, it makes them sensitive to the Fade and to magic."

She nodded and then looked away for a moment, frowning, trying to find sufficient words for what she was trying to describe. It had enraged her when she had finally realized what was happening, what was being done in the name of Andraste and the Maker.

"That's what they say. And the initial infusion may be necessary, I don't know for sure." She said, and then looked back at him, anger in her eyes, "But once you have become aware, the lyrium isn't necessary. I haven't taken lyrium since the first month or so I began training with Cullen."

"And you were able to produce that strong of an annulment without lyrium…" he said, surprised. She could see the thoughts churning behind his eyes and then…realization.

"That's right. The lyrium addiction is entirely unnecessary. There are some few things that lyrium enhances, tracking being one of them, but my abilities without it are not much different from Thrask's or Cullen's. So, why would the Chantry continue to give the templars daily doses of lyrium if they can perform their daily duties without it?"

"Maker…" Anders breathed, "The addiction…they're keeping them under Chantry control with the lyrium addiction!"

"Exactly." She said, grimly, "If a templar doesn't toe doctrinal line, he loses access to the lyrium. The withdrawel sickness is brutal, and sometimes deadly. It can take a year or more to wean properly retired templars off of the stuff. I had a mild case when I stopped taking it and it was terrible. I can't imagine what it would be like to have been addicted for years and have to come off of it suddenly. And those that do leave often wind up like Samson...broken men chasing lyrium on the street. What templar would leave the Order knowing that was his fate? It doesn't excuse the behavior of some…a bad man will be a bad man no matter what his circumstances are…but knowing what I know now…"

"I will have to consider this." He said, quickly, thoughtfully, "No one should be abused that way…not even templars."

She smiled at him then. It was good to see that spark back in his eyes. It was one of the things about him she had fallen in love with, his sincerity. His expression changed, slightly, and he stepped towards her.

"Nora, I'm so sorry. For all of this. It would have been better for you, I think, if you had never met me. You might have been happier."

"No." she said, shaking her head, "My father gave me a piece of advice once that I've always found to be true. He told me that you can't give up the good in your life simply to avoid the bad. You have to take them together and endure the bad so that you can love the good. Of all the things I could have done differently in my life, loving you is not something I would change."

"Is it too late?' he asked, wistfully. A silence hung in the air as she studied him, the earnest look in his eyes, the expression that was both hopeful and fearful at the same time.

"Do you remember the question we used to ask each other, back at the beginning? Before all this happened?"

"Can I keep you?"

"Do you remember what I answered?"

"Always." He said, his voice breaking just slightly.

"I meant it." She said. He lunged towards her then, gathering her into his arms, and she flung hers around his neck. It seemed like it had been an age since she had kissed him, as if she had gone a year without sunlight, and she did ardently.

"I love you." he breathed, almost reverently, as if he couldn't believe it. She leaned her head against his shoulder, savoring the feeling of his body under her hands, the scent of his clothes and his skin, everything.

"I love you, too."

"What happens now?"

"We stay together, find a place to lay low for awhile. If I had to guess, I would say that there are already templars tracking us. It will take them awhile to catch up, and I know their tricks. I have some ideas about how to stay out of their reach. We can do this, if we're careful."

"You know that Justice won't let me stay out of it forever."

"I know." She agreed, "We'll deal with that as it comes. I'll protect you, if it comes down to it."

"You're certain about this? This is what you want?"

"The women in my family have a long and celebrated history of running off with apostates." She replied and smiled, "Why break with tradition now?"

~~0~~

The port town that Isabella chose to pull into first to trade some incidental cargo and catch the latest news before attempting Denerim was relatively small and unassuming. From the harbor, it looked peaceful enough.

"I think you should stay on the boat." Isabella told her and Anders, before going ashore "For the moment, anyway. Let us scout it out and find out what's going on first. I can't think of anything more pathetic than the two of you being caught and hung the first time we make landfall after escaping. And I don't want to have my ship impounded either."

The news, when it came, was sobering. Word of the Kirkwall Chantry's destruction, of a mage uprising, had spread like wildfire. The Free Marches were in a panic, the cities desperately trying to contain their own discontents. Rumors circulated that the Templar Order was disintegrating, fracturing under the strain. There were whispers of a massacre in Starkhaven. With Meredith and Orsino dead, and no viscount to be found, Cullen was trying to hold Kirkwall together as best he could. Nora prayed that he would come through it safely, whatever happened. The world would have a very great need of good men soon.

They stayed in port for three days to exchange cargo for supplies and take on additional cargo, the necessary business of a working ship, and neither Anders' nor Nora's feet touched land once the entire time. She sent money along with Bethany and Merrill to purchase a change of clothes for them all and some essential goods for the coming journey. At her request, Varric quietly sold the fine armor she had been awarded as a gift from the city when she was named Champion. It was too recognizable, too much of a risk. In its stead, he brought her two packages. One contained the simple, non-descript armor than any Ferelden soldier would wear. It had likely belonged to a veteran of the Blight, home and retired after a campaign well-fought. The other she tucked away under her bunk for another day and hoped that day would never come.

On the third day, when the time came to leave, Fenris came above decks, his sword slung over his shoulder. Nora knew, without asking, that he was leaving.

"I can't stay and watch this." He told her. His voice was collected, cold, but his face told a different story. She understood. As difficult as it was, this was the best thing for both of them. In her heart of hearts, there was still a part of her that loved him. He had been her first. She would never forget that. But their respective choices had been made years ago. It was time to say goodbye.

"Varric told you about his network…who you can contact if you need to get in touch with us?"

"Yes."

"Where will you go?"

"I'm not sure." He said, thoughtfully, "I had thought of returning to Seheron. I may travel for a time."

She nodded. She wanted to hug him, but knew he would not stand for that. He had never liked being touched, and he had never been good at displays of emotion.

"Take care of yourself." She told him, at last, "You're free, truly, now. Find a way to be happy."

The ghost of a smile flickered across his face. It was enough.

"Goodbye, Hawke."

And with that, he left. As she saw him fade into the background of the busy quay, she wondered if she would ever see him again. Probably not. She sat down by Anders, where he and Bethany and Merrill were sorting through the gear that had been purchased in town, and brushed her fingertips along his thigh briefly, for comfort, for reassurance. She hoped Fenris _would_ find a way to be happy, wherever he ended up. She hoped they all would.

~~0~~

Varric left them in Denerim. She hadn't really expected him to follow them into the wilderness, but it was comical to watch him try to broach the issue delicately.

"I've got a business to run." He admitted, finally.

"You're leaving me?" she replied, with mock drama, "But Varric…who will I get to tell wildly inaccurate stories about all the dragons I've slain single-handedly with nothing but a salad fork to my name?"

"I'll still do that. Don't worry."

"And who will let me run my fingers through their chest-hair when Anders isn't looking?"

"Hey." The mage interjected, though even he was smiling now.

"I know. It's a terrible burden being a paragon of manliness." The dwarf replied, smugly, before becoming serious, "You know where the dead drops are? My contacts in Ferelden?"

"I know." She said, and smiled at him, "We'll keep in touch."

"Do that. I want to hear all the details."

"Stay safe. Tell Bianca she'd better take good care of you."

"She always does." He replied.

When they were two days south of Denerim and the coast had flattened out from rocky cliffs to coastal flatlands, it was finally time to go. Isabella came ashore with them in the longboat to see them off.

"Be good, kitten." She told Merrill, hugging the elf warmly, "Try not to get lost."

She slipped a small book in Bethany's pack, winking at her.

"Something to keep you warm on the cold Ferelden nights, hey? Don't let the tot get ahold of it, though."

When she got around to Anders, she put a hand on her hip and glared at him, though she was grinning underneath it.

"And you…you be good to her, or you'll answer to me. Although after you answer to Hawke first, I might have to make do with the scraps."

Turning to Nora, her expression softened.

"If you ever need a lift, I make the circuit between the Free Marches and Denerim regularly."

"I'll keep that in mind." Nora replied, leaning down to hug her friend and then grinning as she stepped back, "Hands, Isabella. Didn't anyone ever tell you to keep them to yourself?"

"Not yet."

And so, they were five. Out of their normal clothes, packs slung over their backs, they looked like any other traveling family group. Bethany hitched Merie up onto her hip and looked out across the rolling coastal plain.

"Where now?"

"We should head inland a little ways and find a good spot to camp for the night. There's a fishing village a few miles to the north. We can find out the local news there tomorrow morning and decide where to go." Nora replied.

~~0~~

Later that evening, as darkness settled on the campsite Merrill had found for them, Anders looked up to see Nora crawl into the small tent they would be sharing for the foreseeable future and flump down onto her bedroll, with a sigh.

"Ah, camping. It's just like being back in the army. I'm going to start tearing up with nostalgia any second now."

"Your tent-mate was a handsome mage when you were in the army?" he asked, smiling, feeling inexplicably happy now that they were on their way…to wherever it was they were going.

"Well, she definitely wasn't a mage, although she might just about have made handsome… in the right light…when she forgot to shave."

"I thought you were standing watch?"

"Merrill and Bethany said they would take the first one." Nora replied, sitting back up with a groan. She pulled off her boots and set them near the tent flap, stuffing her socks into them, before undoing the strip of rawhide that pulled her hair back from her face. It spilled around her shoulders in a way that suddenly and irresistibly captured his attention.

He loved to look at her. There were plenty of beautiful women in the world, but very few like Nora. He watched as she turned away and started peeling off her tunic, and was reminded that it had been weeks now since they were intimate. A sailing ship did not afford much privacy and she seemed, unusually, shy around him in that respect. He had never encountered that in her before, but guessed that she needed time to adjust to him again. He could wait.

Now that they were alone, though, he was finding that harder and harder. Her body was firm, as he remembered it being, the muscles well-defined through use. She was a fighter by profession, after all. Even so, the curve of her sides, the way that her waist flared out into rounded hips, was distinctly and pleasantly female.

He moved over to her, encircled her waist gently with his arms, smoothing his fingers over her stomach as he kissed the bare flesh of her shoulder and neck.

"Let me help you with that." He said. There was a moment when he thought she might move away, but she turned into him instead and kissed him fiercely. Within moments, any barriers that might still have existed between them were forgotten entirely.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks for reading! Feedback is appreciated.<em>


	5. Templar

_I've really enjoyed writing these pieces. I had originally planned to have five chapters, but the story sort of took on a life of its own with this one. Hope you enjoy cliffhangers!_

* * *

><p>Being out in open country again felt good, Bethany reflected. After the frantic flight from Lothering, she had never traveled far from Kirkwall and the claustrophobic closeness of ship-board travel put everyone on edge. Now, breathing Ferelden air again, with fields and forest stretching around her in all directions and no thick Circle robes to weight her down, she felt free again.<p>

Merie seemed to be enjoying herself as well. Sometimes she scampered ahead, bringing back handfuls of wild flowers she had picked, sometimes she played marching games with Merrill, and sometimes she walked contentedly at Bethany's side, seeming lost in a happy world of her own. It was possible, she realized, that the girl had never been outside of Kirkwall in her life and this was her first glimpse of a world beyond walls and cliffs.

"I think our goal at the moment should just be to blend in and lay low for a time." Nora had said that morning, after a brief stop at the little village near where Isabella had dropped them off, "We could keep on the move, but that increases our chances of running across trouble eventually. Alternatively, we could try to find a small village inland, out of the way, and set up shop for a time. Let the initial danger pass before we decide what to do."

"Like Mother and Father did." Bethany had replied, understanding.

"Exactly. We all know a thing or two about hiding, so we have an advantage. Once we're in a stable place, I'll get a message to Varric. He promised he'd keep his ear to the ground and get us news when he could. Now, I suppose, we just have to find a good spot to dig in."

So, that's what they were looking for now. A little place to disappear from the world in and become normal, everyday citizens again. Or as normal as four mages and a former Champion could be.

It was coming up on midafternoon and they were following the curve of a shallow river valley, hills to the north and the first green tendrils of the Great Brecillian forest to the south, when Nora suddenly stopped dead in her tracks, nearly causing Bethany to stumble into her. Her sister stood stock still, body as tense as a hunting dog sensing prey, eyes scanning alertly ahead of them.

"What is it?" Anders asked, concerned.

"I thought I sensed…something." Nora replied, cautiously. She shook her head, frowning in puzzlement.

"What?" Merrill asked, anxiously. Bethany felt a cold knot beginning to form in the pit of her stomach, the same that she had often felt when she was a child and her parents had announced they were leaving yet another home.

"I'm not sure…" her sister replied, looking around them, concerned, "I think we should move on, though. Quickly."

Without a word, she picked up Merie and the four adults hurried onward, eyes and ears peeled for any sign of threat.

~~0~~

Nora still seemed restless after they made camp, stopping now and then to stare off into the trees as if concentrating on a piece of music so soft no one else could hear it.

"When you say you sensed something…" Anders probed, trying to broach the subject delicately, "…what does that mean exactly?"

"It's something templars learn to do." She replied, an apologetic look crossing her face, "In order to hunt apostates who might otherwise just blend in to everyone else. You can sort of…sense…magic. Wherever there is a strong connection to the Fade. It takes concentration and a great deal of practice."

"How does it work?" he asked, curious despite himself. As shocked as he had been when he had first learned of Nora's templar training, he had to admit it was useful to have someone around who was familiar with what they were dealing with.

"It's like the surface of a pond. In most places, and around ordinary people, the Veil is still. But a mage has an open connection to the Fade almost all of the time. Templars can feel the ripple in the Veil when a mage passes the way that you can see ripples in a pond. With practice, you can learn to 'read' the ripples in various ways. You can even learn to sense the particular pattern associated with a certain mage, if you are around them long enough. For instance, I could pick you out of a crowded room blindfolded, because I know your pattern so well."

"Any templar can sense this?" he asked, a little alarmed, though warmed by the idea that he was so deeply familiar to her.

"Most of the time, a templar has to be concentrating in order to feel it. Some are more sensitive than others, and some mages make larger and more noticeable ripples than others. But when a mage does magic, it's like a fish jumping in the pond. Even the most distracted templar can feel it, even if he can't see it with his eyes."

"So, what you felt earlier…"

She frowned, shaking her head.

"I can't tell. It was on the very edge of what I can sense, and the presence of four mages in one spot creates a lot of interference."

He nodded and considered this. Could there be another mage somewhere nearby? Most apostates just wanted to be left alone and fled to wilderness areas to stay hidden, but not all were to be trusted just as not all non-mages could be trusted. Some turned to banditry, some had more sinister motives. Lacing his fingers with Nora's as they sat by the fire, listening to the night sounds of the world around him, he thought about the precariousness of their situation and how much better it was than being alone.

"I'm glad you're here with me." He said, sincerely, and felt her lean against him and was comforted.

~~0~~

Morning came in a haze of mist, wreathing the soggy tendrils of the trees and casting a grey pall over the world. Nora had sat vigilant for most of the night, but as the moon crept towards the horizon, Anders had insisted she get some rest and, reluctantly, she had gone into the tent and slept for a couple of hours. He was tired, too, but he had the benefit of Grey Warden endurance and since melding with Justice, he had not needed as much as he used to in order to stay alert. None of them were particularly well-rested, except for Merie, who seemed as inquisitive and active as ever, though she barely spoke a word. Bethany and Merrill had slept restlessly as well, but there was nothing for it but to pack up and keep moving.

A light rain peppered down as they began their walk, letting up midway through the morning. Though not enough to seriously dampen their spirits, it was enough to keep the fog from lifting. They stayed closed to the river for guidance, knowing that the great Eastern Highway would cross it eventually.

At mid-day, they stopped to rest and eat.

"I had forgotten how soon fall came on in Ferelden." Merrill remarked, pulling her woolen cloak closer around her against the damp air, "My clan would be looking for a place to winter by now."

"I think that's what we're doing now." Anders said, and the elf girl smiled.

When they got up to leave, shouldering their packs, Bethany looked around with a frown.

"Where's Merie?"

The girl was nowhere to be seen.

"Merie!" they called, their voices muffled into the thick air, echoing between the trees.

"Where could she have gone to?" Bethany asked, worried, but trying to keep under control, "She's never wandered off like this before. She always stays close by."

"We'll find her." Nora promised. She knew the girl was important to her sister. They were all fond of Merie. None of them would want to see anything happen to the child. They beat the underbrush. Nora backtracked along their trail for a short ways, but could find no trace of her.

"She can't have gone far." Merrill said, frowning.

"Can you track her?" Anders asked, turning to Nora hopefully, "Can you sense her…pattern?"

Nora was silent for a moment, closing her eyes as she tried to let go of the world for just a moment to sense the ebb and flow of the Veil around them. Wherever mages gathered, the Veil thinned. She could feel it billow in her mind around her three companions, masking anything else she could have seen. She shook her head.

"I can't find her. She's young. Her connection to the Fade is faint and unpredictable, and lost in the disturbances caused by the three of you."

"There must be something we can do." Bethany said, almost pleading, "We have to find her."

Nora sighed and looked down for a moment before replying.

"There is something I can try." She admitted, "I will have to go alone, though."

"What?" Anders asked, frowning.

"There are ways I can heighten my awareness." She replied, looking hard at him. _Don't ask_, she thought_, not in front of the others. Don't ask. "_It will be easier if I'm alone. The three of you together create too strong a beacon."

"You're going to hunt her." Bethany said, nodding, "If you think it will help, do it."

Nora nodded and turned to her pack. Quickly, she stripped off all but the most essential gear. She would need to travel as unburdened as possible. She checked the draw of the bastard sword over her shoulder. She had oiled the absorbent fleece inside the scabbard before they had left the ship and so it could be drawn cleanly from its sheath at a moments notice.

"I need something that belongs to her." She said, and Bethany fished a small cloth sash, the one that Merie had worn when she was at the Circle and handed it over. Nora tucked it into her belt and nodded, "Make camp here. I don't know how long this will take. I will try to be back before dark."

Anders fell in beside her as she turned to go, never one to be dissuaded easily.

"Nora," he said, in a rushed whisper, once they were away from the others, "Tell me what you're going to do. Let me help."

"You can't. Besides, I need you here to look after the others." She said, shaking her head.

"You are quite possibly the most frustrating woman in the entire world, you know that?"

"I thought that was one of my best qualities." She retorted. She kissed him briefly, "I love you, and daylight's wasting. Be safe. Don't worry about me."

And with that, she plunged into the undergrowth.

~~0~~

Nora walked until she could no longer see sky between the trees, a good distance away from camp, and then set her pack down on the mossy corpse of an old, fallen oak. She felt bad about avoiding Anders' questions, but it was better if he didn't know. She wished that she didn't know, herself. Fishing in the bottom of her pack, she pulled out a small parcel wrapped in rough brown cloth. Varric had acquired it at her request for just such an occasion. Inside were six opaque glass vials, their wax seals bearing the stamp of the Chantry. She had been amazed that he was able to acquire them in the first place, but Varric had always had a way of accomplishing the impossible.

Selecting one, she replaced the rest in her pack, and sat down on the log. Her body shrank from what she was about to do, remembering, but she pushed the old fear away roughly. Merrill had found no trace of the girl. It had been over an hour since they had noticed she was missing. They couldn't leave without her. With luck, the child had just fallen asleep in the hollow of a tree somewhere and would be easy to find, but there were too many predators in the wilds to trust to luck.

Carefully, she broke the seal on the bottle, the blue, slightly viscous liquid inside glowing faintly in the shadow-light of the trees. Taking a deep breath, steeling her mind, she lifted the vial to her mouth and drank it down quickly.

For a moment, she held her breath, and then it came. The fast-moving rush of the lyrium swept over her body, turning her blood into cold flame within her. Every nerve seemed to sing, to hum with an agonizing mix of pleasure and pain, even as her vision blurred and distorted, the trees taking on a blue-white glow. The air felt like liquid ice in her lungs and she gasped for breath. The world crowded in on her, like a wet membrane against her skin, clinging, sliding, and then, with an almost physical jolt, it seemed to expand outward again at an unbelievable rate, beyond the range of her human senses, beyond what she had learned to sense with Cullen all those years ago.

She stood slowly, light-headed from the initial surge. The effect was stronger than she remembered, but then she had not taken the drug in a long time and the dose she had just taken was more concentrated than she had used before. Far behind her, she could sense her companions, their presence drawing the Veil tight where they stood, like a heavy weight being balanced on a length of stretched cloth. She could sense Anders, his familiar gravity and flow in the tension, and that gave her comfort. It was her anchor. It would guide her back.

Taking the girl's sash from her belt, she unfolded it and held it, rubbing it between her fingers, feeling the remnants of Merie's small pattern on the garment. She had only been able to detect it in quiet moments before, but, magnified by the lyrium, she could read it clearly now. The after-image of the child's connection to the Fade burned in her brain.

Putting away the sash, she shouldered her pack and turned her face upwards slightly, scenting the air like a mabari, her body attuned to something beyond the damp and gloom of the forest, her mind calibrating itself, searching, seething…

And then she found it, the missing piece, drawing her towards it like a bonfire on a hill. She could not see it with her eyes, but there could be no doubt as to where it lay. Her blood surged, urging her onward, the hunter's _avaunt_ that sends the hounds charging after prey. With single-minded purpose, she started off through the trees at a quick, but cautious, pace. In the deepest recesses of her instinctual mind, she knew that she was not the only hunter in the woods today.

~~0~~

"I'm worried about her." Merrill said, and then backtracked, "Both of them."

"Nora will find her." Bethany replied with certainty.

Anders said nothing. He was worried, too, but he couldn't share Bethany's optimism. There was something in the way Nora had looked when she left that disturbed him. He couldn't put his finger on exactly what. If only he could have gone with her…

Merrill stood up suddenly from where she had been vainly trying to gather enough dry wood for a fire and looked out across the river.

"Company's coming." The elf said, nodding, "Look."

Anders stood and peered in the direction she indicated and felt his heart drop into his stomach with sudden, cold fear. The fog had begun to lift after midday, and he could see a party of men, armored and armed, walking up the bank of the river on the other side. It didn't appear they had noticed the campsite yet, but he would have recognized the shape of that armor anywhere. _Of all the damnable timing_….

"We have to get out of here." He breathed, urgently.

~~0~~

Nora was getting closer to her quarry, she could feel it. She picked her way down to the floor of a creek hollow and followed it along the rise of a rocky ridge on her left. Dark crevices in the bare stone stood out like gashes in the hillside. Boulders that had tumbled down from the ridge in years passed dotted the ravine, and she stopped as she reached a particularly impressive formation. The land had buckled here at some time in the past and the ages had worn away at the exposed rock, leaving a fortress-like outcropping, surrounded by small boulders and trees.

_There_. The girl was here somewhere…but so was something else. The Veil was thinner in this place. She slowed her pace to a crawl, sensing, reaching out beyond. And then, like a sudden flame, like an explosion, she felt it. Magic. Srronger than anything she knew Merie, at her young age with her incomplete connection to the Fade, could cast. There was another…another mage…and it was close.

Slowly, she drew her sword and continued onward, padding carefully between the stones. As she rounded the large bulge of the outcrop, she finally saw what she had been hunting. A rudimentary campsite in the cleft of the rock, without even a fire. Merie was crouching next to a young, dark-haired man in tunic and breeches who was leaning against the rock face. A staff, topped with the curving horn of some large animal, was propped up nearby. The two of them glowed in Nora's eyes like candle-flames. A second man, dull to her vision, was sitting on the ground a few feet away, running a whetstone over a pair of daggers.

Merie was the first to look up as Nora approached, cautiously. The girl perked up, smiling, but said nothing. The men, however, stood. She saw the mage reach for his staff.

"That's an awful big sword you've got there, friend." Said the one who was not a mage. There was an edge in his voice, despite the jocular tone, a menace. She stopped before coming too close to him, without taking her eyes off of the mage. His expression was serious, taught with suspicion and distrust, but there was something else…she could almost taste it, feel it in the air, the way it was radiating from him. Fear.

"I'm here for the girl." She said. The men looked at each other, and Nora looked at the child between them, "Merie…come over here."

The girl started forward, but the mage put a hand on her shoulder, holding her gently back.

"Who are you to her?" he asked, cautiously.

"A friend. She has been traveling with me and my companions. We've been looking for her." She replied, and then added, steadily, "I only want the girl. I don't want any trouble."

"We're not fond of trouble either." Said the non-mage, "But we're also not fond of letting little girls go off with strangers, either. Why don't you come over here, put that thing down, and we'll have a chat."

She noticed that he did not put away his own blades and tightened her grip on her sword.

"Merie." She said, trying to keep her voice as calm as possible, as she took a step forward, not moving her eyes from the mage, "I want you to take three big steps away from that man there. Can you do that for me?"

What happened next happened quickly. The man with the daggers bolted sideways, an attempt to flank her. Before her eyes could move back to the mage, she felt the Veil shift around her, contracting and twisting as if it would rend itself. With a shout, she forced her consciousness outward like a shield, absorbing the bolt of force in a burst of null energy. Whirling, she smashed the pommel of her sword into the face of her attacker, knocking him backward with a pained yelp. Somewhere in the background, Merie was screaming.

"Why can't you just leave us alone?" the mage yelled, brandishing his staff, as he stepped towards her, unable to flee with nothing but stone at his back. Her lyrium-charged blood surged through her veins, pounding for battle, for victory, and she struggled to check herself. She wasn't here to kill. She ducked under the mage's first blow. The second thwacked hard against her breastplate, but she barely felt it. Using her own body as a weapon, she rushed him and slammed him back against the stones. He crumpled to the ground and she stepped hard between his shoulder-blades, pinning him, as she pointed a gauntleted finger warningly at the other, who had recovered enough to stumble towards her, blood dripping down his face.

"Stay back, if you value your friend's life." She growled. The man hesitated and then stopped, his long daggers still in hand. Merie was huddled against the face of the rock formation several feet away, wailing in fear. She didn't want to let the mage up, knowing that it wouldn't be long before he recovered his powers, but she had to find a way out of her.

Quickly, she moved from the mage over to Merie and lifted the girl up onto her left hip without turning away from the other two, sword still at the ready. The mage scrambled up and hurried back behind his friend. She took in a deep breath and gave them the most threatening look she could muster.

"Let us pass." She demanded, and began to walk, slowly, towards them. They backed away and she turned to keep her front towards them at all times. Merie clung heavily to her shoulder. There was no way she could fight with the girl hanging onto her, but she had to do something and so she wagered on intimidation and the likelihood of the two risking their lives to get the child back.

Her plan seemed to be working. Neither of the men made a move to follow. Just as she thought she was home-free, however, she heard the snap of underbrush behind her and felt the skin-crawling rap of a sword point on her right pauldron near her neck.

"Put the girl down, Templar." A low, growl of a voice said close by, "And drop that sword."

Slowly, so the unseen assailant could easily see what she was doing, she extended her arm and dropped the sword. Then, she lowered Merie from her arms and set her carefully on the ground. The girl clung to her thigh, sniffling, and the mage hurried forward, pulling her away and gathering her up into his arms.

"Turn around." A second voice said behind her. Gritting her teeth, in frustration, she started to turn.

"I'm not…" she started, but was unable to finish before a hard blow hit her square in the jaw. She staggered, slightly, surprised, and was knocked to the ground with a yell of pain by a second blow to the back of her knee, this time with what she thought was a club of some kind. She tried to raise herself, spitting blood, when the wind was knocked out of her by a solid kick to the stomach, followed soon after by a second and a third in rapid succession. Her helm was removed and strong fingers gripped her hair and drug her, groaning, up onto her knees. She looked up into a pair of bearded, grinning faces.

"Looks like you picked the wrong day to go hunting." One of them said. This time, when he hit her, there was nothing but darkness.

~~0~~

"Why does this happen?" Bethany whispered, angrily, more to herself than any of the others, as they hurried through the forest, "Nora leaves and templars descend around me like flies! Why?"

"We need to be quiet." Anders observed. Luckily, they hadn't unpacked most of their gear yet, and so they were able to grab what they could and head for the treeline. The templars would surely find where they had rested, though, eventually. Why were they out here? This was the middle of nowhere. Was it possible that they were being hunted already? Surely it would take longer than this for a band of templars to catch up to them.

"Where are we going?" Merrill asked, quietly. She looked scared, but the woods were her element. Anders stopped and looked around.

"I don't know. All I know is we have to find a place to hide."

"How will Nora and Merie find us?" Bethany asked, awful realization dawning on her face, "Nora will try to go back to the camp…and we won't be there…"

"She'll find us." Anders replied, in what he hoped was a reassuring voice, "Or she'll stay in the area. When we're sure the templars have passed by, we'll go back and wait for her."

"We could find a cave." Merrill suggested, "My clan lived in the northern part of the Forest before we left and there are caves everywhere."

"That sounds like a good idea." Anders replied, "We need cover before darkness. Let's go."

They started onward again. He hoped that what he said about Nora was true. She had said she could sense him. Maybe that would be enough for her to find them. Though he had no idea if it made a difference, he concentrated on her face as he walked, hoping that, even if she couldn't sense his thoughts, that something at least would get through.

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><p><em>Thanks for reading! Feedback is appreciated.<em>


	6. The Hunt

_I apologize for this one being a couple of days off my usual schedule. More action scenes = more time trying to get it all just right. Thank you so much for the feedback, I'm really glad you guys are enjoying the story, as I'm having a blast writing it._

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><p>The cave they had found was cramped, little more than a weathered out fissure in the side of a hill, but the opening was easy to overlook and it kept off the rain, which began that night and had not let up when dawn came. Anders stared out of the entrance for the fifth time since waking, trying to calm the growing panic that kept rising in his chest. Where was Nora? His mind constructed all sorts of nightmare scenarios. She was lying injured somewhere in the forest. She had stumbled back into camp in time to be captured by the templars. <em>No<em>, he told himself fiercely, _she's fine. She's tough, she's resourceful. She'll find us or she'll find a safe place to wait for us._

"How will we know when the templars are gone?" Merrill asked, from where she was curled up on her bedroll against the wall, with Bethany close by. They hadn't dared to light a fire last night, even if they could have found dry tinder for it, and so they had slept huddled together like rabbits in a hole to conserve warmth.

"I'll go out and scout around a bit when the weather clears." He replied.

"I wonder if Nora is back at the campsite." Bethany said. She looked tired, pale. Scared. It was her sister and her ward that were missing, Anders thought with empathy. He was worried as well.

"Why are they here?" she asked, frowning angrily, "What could they possibly be doing out here in this weather?"

"Hunting, maybe." Anders said, with a sigh, "It's possible it isn't even us they're looking for. The woods are a common place for apostates to hide when they are on the run."

"Why can't they just leave us alone?"

Anders shook his head and turned back to watch the rain that was pattering down outside. He had no real answer to that, only the hope that it was all going to change soon.

~~0~~

Consciousness returned to Nora in stages. First, there was just the sensation of time passing in the darkness, and then the awareness of a dull, painful, wrenching throb throughout her body.

_She's awake_, a voice said somewhere nearby, sounding faint to her ears.

Everything seemed to hurt. Her nerves sang shriller than a kennelmaster's whistle, enhancing the hideous ache in her limbs and a yearning, tearing feeling in her head and chest. She shuddered, remembering the lyrium she had taken the day before and the eventual crash, the _need_ that she had felt after it had begun to wear off when she had first taken it years ago.

_Let's get this done, then_, another, gruffer voice answered nearby.

She could see nothing, something was tied over her eyes, but she was vaguely aware that she was kneeling and her hands were bound behind her. Her muscles were cramped and sore from the uncomfortable position and she tried to shift, to relieve the tension, but found it only produced fresh explosions of pain. Her wrists seemed to be tied down in the back somehow, or bound to her ankles, leaving her in an awkward position.

The shock of the cold water hitting her face blocked out everything else for a moment and she gasped reflexively, heaving to regain her breath.

"'Morning." A gravely voice said, too cheerfully, from somewhere in front of her. She shivered, trying to force her sluggish thoughts into alertness.

"Who are you?" she asked, straining to listen to hear what was going on around her.

"We'll be asking the questions." said another voice somewhere to the left of the first.

"This is a mistake…" she began, but was silence by a blow across her cheek. It hurt but it didn't feel like it had been delivered at full force. Rather, it was administered only to make a point.

"You don't listen, do you, Templar?" the first voice grunted, allowing a slight pause for punctuation before continuing, "Where are the others?"

She paused, trying to process the question. If he was asking about her friends, she should say nothing to keep them safe. If he was talking about someone else, she had no idea who he meant.

"I don't know what you're talking about." She replied, evenly, and braced herself as she heard another blow coming. This one was meant to hurt. The coppery taste of blood filled her mouth.

"Wrong answer." The gruff voice said, patiently, as if this was a routine exercise.

"Think carefully." The second voice added, reasonably, "Just tell us what we want to know and all this can stop."

"Where are they, Templar?" the first voice asked again, threateningly.

"I'm not a templar." She replied, gritting her teeth, and heard a rough laugh.

"There's about half a dozen bottles of lyrium in your pack that say otherwise. We're not daft, Serrah. We know your kind when we see them. Being out of uniform doesn't change what you are."

"If you let me explain…" she began and then bit back a cry of pain and the beating commenced in earnest. When it was over with, they drug her back upright.

"Listen," said the milder of the two voices, "All we're after is the boy your people picked up in Stonebridge five days ago. That's not sodding unreasonable, is it? Not something worth dying over? Tell us where he is, and we'll let you go."

"I told you, _I don't know what you're talking about!_" she shot back at him, angrily, "I'm not a templar and this is all a misunderstanding that we can clear up if you'll just listen to me for a moment!"

.Someone sighed.

"We're going to have to do this the hard way."

~~0~~

Anders made his way carefully through the wet forest, backtracking towards the river. Luck had been with him so far…no sign of the templars. If luck continued to be with him, he would find Nora and the girl waiting back at their campsite and they could all get the hell out of here before any additional unpleasantness occurred. _Let her be okay_, he said, silently, though he was not sure who he was saying it to. He had never been religious. The Maker, as the Chantry so openly admitted, was not taking requests from His children at the moment, so why bother praying? _I've only just got her back_, he thought, his jaw clenching, furiously, _I can't lose her again now_. He would take whatever help he could get.

The campsite was empty, but there were the remains of a fire from the previous night. His heart leapt with hope. If Nora had been here, she must be looking for them now. Maybe she would be back at the cave when he returned. As he turned to go, though, he had the strange, hair-raising sensation that he was being watched. Scanning the trees, the long riverbank, he could see nothing. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement and turned just in time to see a face disappear into the bushes. His heart pounded in his chest and he raised his staff in case of ambush.

If it were the templars, he thought, they would have just rushed him. Nora would have recognized him immediately, she wouldn't be hiding. Who else could it possibly be? _Think_, he told himself, trying to pull his thoughts together, _you have to do something, what will it be?_ Drawing in a breath, he moved towards the treeline. Whoever was out there, it would be better to confront them head on than wonder if they were out there waiting to strike or following him back to the cave. This was not usually his area of expertise, he thought mournfully, wishing even more than before that Nora was here. What would she have done?

"Show yourself!" he demanded, pulling together as much courage as he could as he reached the edge of the woods, stepping in a ways. His words were greeted with silence, just the wind through the branches. Cautiously, he moved further in, searching the brush, listening for any sound. The snap of a twig nearby nearly sent him running in a fit of overwrought nerves.

He stood for a moment and listened, and just when he was about to move on, he saw a figure dart out from behind a tree to his side. In an instant his staff was alight with crackling electricity.

"Stop!" he called out, a warning before he sent the bolt towards its target, and to his surprise the figure did stop, skidding on the leaves that covered the ground. It was a man…no, a youth, probably no older than thirteen or fourteen, with dark brown hair and wide eyes. His clothes were filthy and torn and he looked skinny and frightened. Anders felt as if his heart was going to explode any moment from the sheer, useless surge of adrenaline. He lowered his staff, extinguishing the charge, staring.

"You're a mage?" the youth asked, tentatively, cautiously. Anders nodded, dumbfounded. The boy rushed over to him, eyes frantic.

"You've got to help me!"

~~0~~

Nora wriggled against her bonds, trying to loosen the cords and feeling them cut into her flesh as they held tight. She was not sure exactly what was going on, but she knew she had to get out of this somehow. By her judgment, she had been gone about a day already. The others would be worried, and Anders would no doubt try to come looking for her.

Her captors, whoever they were, would not believe that she was not a templar. She supposed she would be skeptical if the situation was reversed, but she could not seem to make them understand and they would not listen. They seemed to be looking for a boy, a relative perhaps, who had been taken by templars and were not willing to take no for an answer. She could hear the ominous scrape of a whetstone moving across steel somewhere nearby, and decided that whatever the hard way was, she didn't want to find out.

It didn't help that her body was not cooperating with her. In addition to the injuries recently inflicted on her, she could not seem to stop shivering, though she felt as if she were roasting in her skin at the same time. Having experienced a worse version of it before, she knew it was a side-effect of the lyrium leaving her system and not being replaced. Her thoughts seemed muddled and it was hard to concentrate, and she was thirsty. So very, very thirsty.

"Keep that up and you'll make it worse." A male voice said near her head, and she felt something pressed to her lips, "It's water. Drink."

She did, gratefully, draining the wooden beaker in one draught, gasping. Her body yearned for more. The voice that spoke to her was different than the others, more cultured, the lilt to the words familiar.

"Thank you." She rasped. There was a silence. She continued quickly, desperate to seize the chance to connect with one of her captors, to explain, "You're from Kirkwall. I recognize your accent."

"Yes." The voice said, warily.

"I lived there once." She said, searching for something, anything, to say next, "Do you have news of it?"

"None that I care to pass on." The voice remarked dryly, and paused, "What is your name, serrah?"

"Hawke." She answered, truthfully, and hoped that it was not a mistake. If he recognized the name, if he had been a mage in Kirkwall, it could surely not make the situation worse.

"Ser Hawke." The voice replied, quietly, soberly, "I have to tell you that if you don't start to cooperate, my companions here are likely to kill you."

"Believe me, if I could tell you where your friend was, I would do so gladly." She assured him, praying that someone _would_ finally believe her, "Our enemies are the same."

"You claim you are not a templar. And yet I saw you Dispel, and you have prepared lyrium with you. You are very clearly suffering from its effects now." He said, carefully.

"Messere," she replied, drawing upon every ounce of concentration and sincerity she could, "If you will allow it, I will be _happy_ to explain myself."

She heard the man shift beside her and then he was gone. A few moments later, there were footsteps and the blindfold was jerked roughly off. She blinked in the dim light that filtered down through the canopy of trees and for a moment, she thought she was seeing double. Standing over her, just a head or so taller than her when she was kneeling, were two dwarves, and they were identical except for the scars on their faces.

"Talk." One of them growled. And she did.

~~0~~

"He's been gone a long time." Bethany said, peering out of the cave in frustration, "Maybe we should go after him."

"Anders said to stay here." Merrill replied, doubtfully, "He might be on his way back now. If we leave, we could miss him."

She could see that her friend was working herself up into a state. The human mage sat down heavily and leaned back against the wall, fidgeting anxiously. It was understandable. Her sister and Merie were missing and they had no way of knowing when Anders would return. Merrill laid a hand on the woman's shoulder.

"It will be alright, _lethallan_." She said, gently, and saw Bethany brush tears out of the corner of her eye, leaving a streak of dirt on her cheek.

Just then, they heard a sound from outside…the snapping of brush, the sound of boots crush leaves and twigs beneath them. Merrill perked up suddenly, expecting to see Anders drop down through the hole at any moment, but then it registered to her that there was more than one set of footsteps.

"Are you certain?" an unfamiliar male voice spoke outside. Merrill felt Bethany clench her hand tightly.

"It's strong here. Can you not feel it?" another said. _Elgar'nan_, it sounded like the men were standing right on top of them!

"It's this damnable forest. I can't…what was that?"

There was a silence.

"Spread out." A third man ordered, and they heard more footsteps, "If he's here, we'll find him."

"Oh, no…" Bethany breathed, horrified. Merrill reached for the knife at her belt. _Let me help you…_a familiar voice spoke into the back of her mind…_I can help you make them leave. You know we can. _She shook her head and forced her concentration outward, to the mouth of the little cave. Only as a last resort, she promised herself. Only if there was no other way.

~~0~~

Anders hurried through the woods back towards the trees, listening with growing alarm as the boy, who had identified himself as Brann, explained his situation.

"So, I lost them as we were crossing at the ford. Can't swim in all that armor, can they?" the young man said.

"Yes, that was a bold move." He replied, absently, his mind racing. He had thought Nora would be back at the camp, but there had been no sign of her. Everything seemed to be going wrong, and, though he couldn't refuse a fellow mage help, he was not entirely sure he should be leading the object of a templar hunt back to where Bethany and Merrill were hiding, "Do you know where they are now?"

"No. They've been right on my trail for days now, couldn't shake them. But I haven't seen or heard them in hours now. Maybe they got lost."

"I doubt it." Anders replied, frowning, and then froze as he heard a distant voice. For a moment, he thought it might be Merrill or Bethany calling for him. They were near enough to the cave. There was the distant crunch of movement. But the voice, echoing around the trees, was male and Anders realized with a sickening sensation that the templars must be near the cave.

"Hide." He told Brann, quickly. "Get under a bush and cover yourself with leaves if you have to. Wait till the templars pass by and then go straight ahead from here. There's a ravine with a cave not far in that direction and my friends should be there. Make sure they're alright and then stay put, all of you."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to draw them off." Anders said, determinedly. He had the feeling that he was about to do something monumentally foolish, but Bethany and Merrill were in trouble and they were trapped. He took a deep breath, clapped Brann on the shoulder in what he hoped was a reassuring way, and then took off through the forest at a tangent from the way they came.

When he was a good ways away, he stopped and closed his eyes. This was a disaster. What he was about to do was reckless and absolutely contrary to everything he would normally have done. _Like a fish leaping in a pond_, he remembered Nora saying. With that, he raised his hand, summoning a ball of energy in his palm and pouring every ounce of power he could into it.

~~0~~

Bethany was sure it was all over with. They could hear the templars searching overhead, beating the brush. Freedom was nice while it lasted, she thought, gripping her staff so hard her fingers ached. She could feel Merrill's thin body beside her in the gloom of the cave, frozen with tension, waiting, listening. The entrance of the cave was too small for more than one person to enter at a time, creating a bottleneck. If they were lucky, they might be able to hold the entrance for a while before they were captured.

"There!" someone shouted above, and her heart skipped a beat, the adrenaline pounding of her blood audible in her ears. She felt Merrill shift, getting into position, the elf's breath quickening. There was the crash and clank of armored bodies moving through the trees up above and then…fading away into the distance. Bethany looked into Merrill's green eyes and found equal confusion there. There was silence in the forest once more.

Then, before relief could set in, they heard another noise outside. Footsteps and a desperate panting for breath. An unfamiliar face appeared at the mouth of the cave. The end of Bethany's staff flashed with fire as she prepared to blow the attacker into the Void, but she checked herself at the last moment as the flames illuminated a young face, eyes wide with alarm.

"Don't shoot, Anders sent me!" the boy said, drawing back slightly, fearfully, "Quick, can I come in before they change their minds and come back?"

~~0~~

"Our apologies, Ser Hawke." One of the dwarves grunted, as Nora quickly strapped on her armor, gathering her gear, "But you can understand our mistake."

"I can't say I blame you." She assured them. Her body ached abysmally from the beatings and the last, lingering effects of the lyrium, but there was no serious harm done. Anders would have a fit when she got back to camp, but he would heal her and her bruises would be yellowing and forgotten by the end of the week.

Once everything had been explained, the men had untied her immediately and apologies had been given all around. For simplicity's sake, she had told them she had once trained as a templar in Kirkwall, but had never taken vows because of her feelings about mages and was now traveling with her family looking for a new place to settle when her sister's child, had wandered off. This seemed to strike a chord with the group, as they, too, were searching for a mage.

"We're looking for our brother." explainedFaelan, the mage. He and his brother Taren, the man with the daggers she had fought the previous night, had come from Kirkwall with their youngest brother after Faelan had managed to escape from the Circle there. The dwarven twins were their employers, a pair of mercenaries rounding up the bounty on darkspawn stragglers, "He started showing magic just before we left. We thought we were safe in Stonebridge, but someone must have found Brann out and reported him. They snatched him right off the street."

"We tracked the templars to the forest before losing the trail. I'm not sure why they would have come here. It's far off course if they were taking him back to the Circle Tower." Taren said, his face hardening, "We're going to get him back."

"Your brother's harder to keep a hold of than a greased nug." Added Bhor, the more gregarious of the dwarf twins, "Wouldn't be surprised to find he'd gotten loose and run circles around those templars. We'll find him, don't you worry."

"We haven't seen any templars so far on our travels…or any young men of your brother's description." Nora said, as she buckled her sword onto her back, and flashed a sympathetic look at the mage and his brother, "My sister is a mage, and she was once taken by the Circle. I know what that is, I hope you find him."

Before they could respond, though, Nora was suddenly conscious of a vague worrying feeling in the back of her brain and then, she felt it. It was like a signal flare, the shockwave rolling through the Veil like the turbulent waves of a passing ship. Magic…very powerful magic…had been cast somewhere nearby and following in its heels, an all too familiar pattern.

"What is it?" Faelan asked, studying her stricken expression.

"My family is in trouble." She breathed, gathering up Merie, and backing away, urgently, "I have to go, I'm sorry."

"We're behind you." Taren answered, quickly, and she turned and raced off through the trees like a madwoman, the image of Anders' beacon burning in her mind like the sun, with the four men pounding along behind her.

~~0~~

Anders had never run so far so fast in his entire life. Grey Warden endurance or not, his lungs felt like they were on fire and his legs felt like they were going to collapse under him at any moment With three templars in full pursuit behind him, though, there was no stopping. He hadn't thought this far ahead. All he'd wanted to do was pull the templars away from the cave so Bethany and Merrill would have a chance. He hadn't really thought about what he would do if they caught him instead.

He didn't see the slope of the creek hollow until it was too late and he fell, tumbling down the slope, over rocks and thorn bushes until a tree stopped his descent with a lung-emptying whoosh of pain. He gasped, floundering as he tried to scramble to his feet. His side hurt abominably, as if he'd broken some ribs, but there was no time to stop and try to heal it now. He righted himself and looked around like a wild animal, trying to figure out which way to go, when he heard a crashing sound like a herd of cattle charging up the stream bank from the left and felt despair overwhelm him. Somehow, they'd managed to outmaneuver him. Taking a deep, painful breath, he decided he was not going to go down without a fight.

Just as he was preparing himself to try and blast the first templar he saw to smithereens, Nora appeared from behind the clump of trees and briars that had hidden his assailants, Merie in her arms, and he nearly dropped his staff in surprise. She skidded to a halt, gaping at him, as four strangers appeared behind her.

"Nora?" he panted, in disbelief.

"Get behind me!" she cried, setting the child down behind her and drawing her sword, as the templars crested the top of the hill.

~~0~~

Nora steeled herself as the templars skidded and slid down the slope towards them, weighing their options as she sensed the dwarven twins fanning out to one side of her, Bhor with his axe and Bheran hefting his hammer threateningly, and Taren moving grimly up to stand with her to the other side. Anders limped quickly to stand behind her with Faelan, who had picked up Merie, the little girl burying her face in the rough cloth of his tunic. Two-to-one were good odds, if it came down to it, but, with Merie involved and Anders already injured, it would be a bloody fight.

The three templars approached them cautiously. Two were young, recruits if she had to guess, the third seemed seasoned. Something did not seem quite right about them, though. She couldn't put her finger on it. There was a look in their faces, a lack of confidence in the way they moved and in the way they were sizing her and the others up that seemed strange compared to other templars she had known.

"Tell your comrades to stand down, serrah." demanded the elder of the men, the leader, sternly, "You are interfering with Templar business."

As she was formulating a response, a thought struck her. _Forgive me, Cullen_, she thought, drawing herself up to her full height and delivering an imperious look at the lead templar.

"That was precisely what I was about to say to you, Ser." She said, severely, with a biting, military tone. The recruits shifted uncomfortably, and even the commander seemed to be taken aback. He opened his mouth to speak, and she pressed onwards, ignoring him. Summoning up the memory of an old, hard-nosed, steely-eyed captain she had trained under when she and Carver had first joined the Ferelden army years ago, she paced a few steps up and down the forest floor irrately, shooting a glare at each of the templars in turn that conveyed nothing but pure and righteous indignation, "What in the Void do you think you were doing crashing through the forest like a herd of swamp buffalo? Is this how they train templars in Ferelden?"

"We were hunting…" the leader started and Nora stopped in her tracks and turned, fixing him an icy look designed to tell him exactly what she thought about that.

"Hunting?" she said, her tone starting soft, like a thundercloud rumbling before the lightening strike, and building up to an apoplexy of fury, "You call this disgraceful display _hunting_? Andraste's flaming sword, we'll all be lucky if you haven't alerted every apostate in twenty miles to our location!"

"Now, see here, Serrah…" the leader replied, angrily, but she cut him off.

"That is Knight-Captain Amell of Kirkwall to you, Ser Knight." She interrupted, coldly. The recruits had taken a step back and were staring at the trees, the ground, anything but their leader now. Nora shook her head, disgustedly, "As if we all didn't have enough trouble at the moment. And Knight-Commander Cullen has always spoken highly of the Ferelden Order, as well."

"We were pursuing that mage there!" the commander insisted, exasperated, stabbing a finger at Anders, who had a stunned look on his face. Nora turned, raising an eyebrow at him, desperately hoping he would be able to hold up the ruse.

"Is this true, mage? Were you fleeing from these knights?"

"No…no, of course not, Knight-Captain." Anders sputtered, after a second. "I was…I was just coming back to turn myself in. I'm…terribly sorry. I don't know what came over me. I'm ready to go back to Kirkwall now."

"Mmm." She replied, lifting her chin in an appraising expression, "Under the circumstances, I am inclined to be merciful. See that it does not happen again. The next time you try to escape, I will _not_ be lenient."

"Thank you, Knight-Captain."

She turned her gaze back to the templar commander, whose mouth was hanging open in a very un-templar-like manner, and narrowed her eyes.

"There you have it, Ser Knight." She said, "Now, if you have no further business, we have already wasted enough time here. Since this mage has now rightfully come to his senses and this unnecessary and deeply disappointing business is done, I must get my charges to Denerim and set sail for Kirkwall as soon as possible."

"Wait." The commander said, as she turned to leave, "We're searching for a mage child that we were to escort to the Circle at Lake Calenhad. He escaped several days ago. Have you seen him? He would be about fourteen, brown hair, scrawny."

"Yes." She replied, slowly, as if thinking, "Yes, I'm sorry to say that we have. We attempted to capture him peaceably, but the lad...well, may the Maker have mercy on his soul."

"Maker have mercy." The recruits murmured, automatically, in unison. The templar commander sighed, shoulders sagging, and looked back at his men.

"I suppose we're finished here then." He said, sighing, and returned his gaze to Nora, "Maker guide your path, Ser Amell, and grant you safe journey."

"And you also, Ser Knight." She said, bowing her head stiffly. She turned and walked past them, back up the slope of the hollow, hearing her companions fall in behind her.

"That…" Anders said, awed, once they were safely out of earshot of the disappointed templars, "…was quite possibly the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

Nora blew out a deep breath she had been holding and shook her head.

"When we find a town, remind me to send Varric a very long thank you letter."

~~0~~

"He said he would come back." Brann assured them, but Bethany had had it up to hear with assurances.

"I don't care, I'm not sitting here like a chicken in a coop one moment longer." She said, firmly, "You two can either come or not, but I'm going to find them."

"Bethany…" Merrill began, pleading, but she jammed her arms through the straps of her pack resolutely and crawled up towards the entrance.

From the light filtering down through the trees, it was running up on early evening. Much of the damp from the rain was gone, and she could see where the templars had disturbed the leaf fall and the underbrush around the ravine. Merrill scrambled out behind her, followed by the boy Brann. Anders and his stupid, bold, half-baked plans, she thought, bitterly, as she stared around, trying to pick a direction. She wasn't even sure which way the river was now.

"We should stay here…" Merrill said, gently, "It will be dark soon."

Bethany turned to deliver a sharp reply, when they heard a call through the trees. They all turned to see a group of people approaching. To her incalculable relief, Anders and Nora were in the front. They both looked the worse for wear, but they were smiling.

"You're back!" Merrill cried, rushing up and hugging Nora and then Anders and then Nora again. Bethany hurried after them and embraced her sister, tearfully, too tightly.

"I thought something had happened to you!" she said, and then smacked Anders hard on the shoulder before hugging him, too, "Don't you ever do anything like that again!"

She stepped back and wiped the tears from her eyes before looking around.

"Where's Merie?"

Nora turned, smiling, and looked behind her where Brann was prancing around two men and a pair of dwarves like an excited puppy. One of the men was holding Merie, and, when he turned to look at her, she felt her heart nearly stop in her chest.

"Faelan?" she gasped, and saw the look of stunned recognition in his eyes. A few seconds later, she was in his arms, sobbing incoherently.

* * *

><p><em>Thanks for reading! Feedback is appreciated.<em>


	7. Full Circle

_So, here it is, the last chapter. I've put the author's note at the end, so as not to spoil anything, but thank you very much for reading in advance. :)_

* * *

><p>Anders looked at Nora quizzically and she shrugged, equally surprised by the image of her sister jumping into an apparent stranger's arms and weeping, or laughing, volubly. It was hard to tell, and she had no explanation. Finally, the mage set Bethany down and she wiped tears from her eyes.<p>

"You've grown a beard." She said, finally, and Faelan laughed and reached out to touch her face as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

"Bethany…"

"I've missed something again, haven't I?" Merrill observed, mournfully.

"Bethany, would you like to…" Nora prompted, gently, at a loss for words.

"He was in the Circle. In Kirkwall." Her sister replied. She had a smile on her face larger than Nora had seen her smile in a very long time, "We were...Oh, Maker, Faelan, I thought I'd never see you again!"

"I'm sorry." He said, earnestly, shaking his head, without taking his eyes from her, "I wanted to tell you, but…Bethany, how did you get away? What are you doing here?"

"Let's make camp." Nora suggested. Whatever was happening here, it could be sorted out more easily over a meal around a fire, "We can compare stories then."

~~0~~

"So, the rumors are true." Faelan said somberly later, as the fire sent sparks like lightning bugs up into the darkness. Bethany sat beside him, her hand clasped in his. She had hardly left his side since the meeting at the cave, "I never thought I would see it in my lifetime."

"We were hoping to find a place to lay low for awhile." Nora replied, nodding, "Those templars were badly-trained fools, but we might not be so lucky next time. After what happened, it's not a question of whether they'll come. It's a question of when they'll catch up."

Faelan nodded. His brother tossed another log onto the fire.

"Not many places a mage can hide in Ferelden these days." Taren said, giving Nora a shrewd look, and then nodding at his brothers, "As you can see. Where were you thinking of heading?"

"We hadn't really decided yet." Nora replied, glancing at Anders, who nodded, "Wherever it is, it will have to be small enough not to have its own templars. All of us together make too big a target to risk constant scrutiny."

"You seem like formidable folks. We could use another blade." Bhor mentioned, and his twin grunted assent.

"I'm grateful for the offer," Nora replied diplomatically, and then glanced at Merie, who was nodding off in Bethany's lap, "But our circumstances would make that a difficult prospect, I think."

"Sleep on it." Bhor said, with a shrug, "If you change your mind, the offer stands."

The twins offered to take first watch, and so, bit by bit, the rest of the group found their way to their tents.

"I think you'll sleep with us tonight, little mouse." Nora told Merie, taking the sleepy child from Bethany, who smiled gratefully and followed Faelan back to his tent. Once inside their own, she settled the child down for the night and tucked the blankets around her, aware of Anders watching her, smiling.

"What are you grinning at now?"

"At you. I don't think I've ever seen you around children before. I was just imagining you fussing over a couple of our own like that someday."

"A brood of magelets with my stubbornness and your penchant for trouble? They'd be the terrors of Thedas." She teased, but only partially. They were both aware that there was a slim chance that they would be able to have children, Anders being a Grey Warden. There were practical barriers besides that. There was an excellent chance that any child of theirs would be a mage and that came with problems of its own. There was also the matter of their being fugitives. It might just have been possible in Kirkwall, but now…

"What is it?" he asked, concerned, reaching out to rest a hand on her shoulder. She smiled at him and shook her head.

"It's nothing, love. It's been a long couple of days and I'm tired." She said. She kicked off her boots and stretched out on the pallet alongside Merie, who was already fast asleep. Anders lay down beside her and she put her arm around him, snuggling close, closing her eyes and letting everything else go. In the end, it didn't matter, she thought. Whatever happened, she had the things that were most important to her now. And, really, she thought as she drifted off to sleep, what more could you ask for out of life?

~~0~~

When they struck camp the next day, Faelan, Taren, and Brann approached with Bethany, their packs shouldered.

"We'd like to come with you, if you don't mind." Faelan said, mildly, to Nora.

"Are you sure?" she asked, critically, though Anders could tell she was hiding a smile, "It may be rough going."

"Not much rougher than where we've been." Taren replied, and Bethany took Faelan's hand.

"They're coming with us." She said, decisively.

"Oh, well, then, that's settled." Nora replied, grinning, "So my little sister says, so shall it be done."

They laughed, but Anders knew in the back of his mind that Nora was more worried about the situation than she let on. If it was risky to have four mages in one place, adding two more could only make it worse. But he also knew Nora would never refuse her sister, especially given the apparent relationship between Faelan and Bethany. The quiet, dark-haired mage seemed to be a good man, astute in his judgment and easy to get along with. He just wondered where they could go where six mages could pass by unnoticed.

The season was beginning to change in earnest and the trees in the Great Brecillian forest were just starting to turn fiery red and gold when they came upon fresh ruts left, Merrill said, by Dalish aravels. She had been quieter since the incident with the templars, but would not talk about whatever was troubling her, even to Nora. And so, the next morning, Anders was not surprised to find her waiting with her belongings already packed.

"I don't belong in the world you all live in." she said, sadly, "And this is the best chance I have of finding my own people again."

"Are you sure?" Nora asked, seriously, perhaps sensing that argument would be fruitless.

"Yes." Merrill said, and shook her head, "You don't have to worry about me, Hawke. I've given up blood magic. The spirits didn't really help me in the end anyway, did they?"

_Thank the Maker_, Anders thought to himself, _finally._

"I still want to help my people, to help preserve our history and our culture." The elf said, firmly, "I can do that better among the Dalish."

In the end, at Nora's insistence, she allowed them to escort her until they caught up with the Dalish. Once it was established that the clan would accept her, there were tearful goodbyes and Anders had the feeling that this parting hit Nora hardest of all of them so far. It was hard not to feel protective of Merrill and he knew that Nora felt a certain amount of responsibility, still, for her safety. As they backtracked along their path, he took her hand briefly.

"She'll be fine." He said, "It's the best thing for her, I think."

"I hope so." Nora breathed, and was silent for much of the day.

~~0~~

By the time they reached the rolling plains of farm and pastureland that marked the beginning of civilization, harvest time was in full swing. They were able to hire on as harvest workers for a day in exchange for a hot meal and bed-space for the night, and from the landowner they learned of a small dairy that was being sold nearby.

"I think this is the best situation we can hope for at the moment." Nora said later, after they had inspected the property, "I don't relish spending a Ferelden winter on the road. It's out of the way, there's plenty of room for all of us, there's not a proper Chantry for miles, and it's a respectable profession that won't raise too many eyebrows in the neighborhood."

"How hard can it be?" Bethany asked.

It became immediately apparent that none of them knew the first thing about livestock or running a dairy, but the previous owner had left them with more than enough hay to feed the animals through the winter and they had coin enough between them that there was little chance they would starve. By trial and error and with the advice of some of their neighbors, they eventually settled into a routine and actually began to turn a profit. It was not the work they were used to, but Nora found that she enjoyed exchanging her sword for a plowshare. After fighting desperately to gain a foothold in the city and then finding herself squarely in the middle of one difficult political situation after another, being responsible for nothing more than a few dozen cows and the happiness of her little extended family was a relief.

Even so, Kirkwall still hung in the corners of her mind. On the boat, after Fenris had left, she had decided to put it behind her. What was done was done and there was no way to go but forward. Still, in the deep watches of the nights, when she sometimes lay awake, she could not help feeling that she had fallen from something more than privilege when she left the city. Her choices had never been simple ones, but she had always had a sense of doing the right thing. Ever since Kirkwall, since the nightmare destruction of the Chantry, since seeing the look of disappointment and consternation on Cullen's face as he stepped back and allowed her to go, she had not felt that, though she could not exactly say she regretted the choices she had made either. If she had fallen from grace, she accepted the loss of the life she had built for herself in Kirkwall as her penance and hoped that the Maker, who knew Himself what it was to love, would understand the reasons behind her failures and have mercy.

In the mean time, she tended her farm. She took joy from her sister's happiness with Faelan and from her surrogate aunt-hood to Merie. She took comfort in news from Varric that her friends were safe, even Aveline, who remained captain of the guard in Kirkwall at Cullen's behest. She allowed herself to love Anders unstintingly, and found that they completed each other as well as they always had. Her peace could not last, she knew, but she savored it while she could.

~~0~~

Reality intruded again a month before the onset of spring in the form of a half dozen templars on horseback. Nora spotted them riding up the dirt lane towards the farm as she was returning to the house from putting out fresh hay for the herd.

"Get everyone to the safe place." She told Anders, dragging out the emergency packs she had kept ready at all times since they had moved in. She had gathered them around and Dispelled their signatures of magic in order to grant them additional, temporary cover from the templar's sight, "Taren and I will hold them up as long as we can. If we don't meet you there by morning, leave without us. Follow the plan."

"Come back to me." He told her, and she hugged him hard before shoving him and the others out of the back door, where they would be hidden by the house and barn as they made their way swiftly towards the woods. She looked at Taren, who held her sword out to her, grimly, his own daggers strapped to his waist. It had been months since she had picked up the weapon, and it was both comforting and disappointing at once that it felt as if she had never put it down.

"Let's welcome our guests, shall we?" she said, and Taren nodded, turning towards the door.

Stepping out onto the porch, she watched as the templars milled in front of the house, their horses scaring the chickens as they stamped and snorted frostily in the yard. She noted the quality of their armor, the way they dismounted in unison, and knew that these were not the back-country templars they had encountered previously. The captain moved towards the porch, with a grim, business-like expression. She saw from his expression that he knew her face.

"There are no mages here, Ser Knight." She told him, firmly, matching his gaze.

"I am charged to return you to Kirkwall, Champion, with or without the mage you have been sheltering." He said, crisply, warily. By his accent, he was a Kirkwaller. She wondered whether this was Cullen's order or whether outside powers were finally forcing her old friend's hand.

"For what purpose?"

"That is not my affair. I know only that your presence is required." The templar captain replied, and then stepped closer with a glance back at his men, continuing in a lower tone, "I have no wish to make this more unpleasant than it must be. The Knight-Commander has promised amnesty for your return to the city. I believe he thinks you could assist him in easing the turmoil there. Kirkwall has need of you, Champion. Will you come?"

Nora stared at the man for a long moment. She could go back. She could help put things right. It was strangely tempting, even after these many months away, and she briefly considered accepting the offered amnesty and returning with the knights. But it would mean leaving her family to fend for themselves, it would mean losing Anders, and she knew, even as she felt the pull of her old life, that she could never do that.

She shook her head, "Take my regrets and regards to the Knight-Commander, but I cannot come with you."

The templar looked disappointed, and sighed.

"My orders demand that I return with you nevertheless." He said, and before he could speak the word "arrest" or draw his sword, she stepped quickly back through her front door and slammed it, drawing the bolt.

"It should take them a minute to break that down." She told Taren, urgently, hurrying towards the back of the house, "Up to the loft. I've got an idea."

~~0~~

"Find them!" Nora heard the templar captain shout from downstairs, accompanied by the crash of her front door splintering inward and the flurried clanking and clomping of iron-soled boots on floorboards. There was no way the two of them could hold off six heavily armed and armored knights by themselves. They would have to work quickly and intelligently.

She crouched at the trap door that lead to the loft attic of the farmhouse. Sheaves of herbs hung from the rafters, giving the cool air a pungent smell. Taren stowed the ladder along the floor several feet away and looked up at her, seriously.

"Do you think this will work?"

"We'll make it work." She replied, her eyes peeled on the top of the stairs. The first templar appeared and shouted back for his comrades. She waited, with the hatch held open about a foot, enough for them to get a good look at her face, as they piled into the hallway.

"Come down here." The captain ordered, sternly. _One, two, three, four, five_…she counted the heavy, armored bodies in the hallway. One was missing. She glanced back at Taren and flicked her eyes towards the corner of the loft where the roof thatch met the floor. The wiry man put a dagger between his teeth and crept quietly towards it, digging through the thatch.

"I told you, Ser Knight." She said, to buy time, "I have obligations here."

"Listen," the man replied, trying to maintain a reasonable tone, "I have no wish to fight you, but I _will_ carry out my orders. By force, if I must. Do not make that necessary."

Taren peered back from where he had crawled out on to the roof of the house among the thatching and gave her the signal for 'all clear'.

"Then I'm sorry it has to come to this." She told the templar captain, and let the trap door fall close with a bang, dragging a couple sacks of heavy grain over it.

She heard thumps and voices from downstairs , and climbed across the roof beams to the hole in the thatch and out onto the roof. She could see out over the yard, the templars' stout horses still standing in a clump. Taren pressed a finger to his mouth and pointed down. The last templar must be on the porch below. She could hear a crash back in the attic. They were trying to get through the hatch and she guessed it would take them a few minutes to get enough power behind them to shift the grain sacks holding it down. Nodding to Taren, she moved as quietly as possible over to the edge of the porch and saw him move to the opposite side. Positioning herself, she made eye contact with her partner and, on the count of three, swung down onto the porch.

The templar was standing in front of the open door and nearly dropped his sword as she swung down on one side and Taren landed a few feet away from him on the other, neatly flanking him. She made as if to draw her sword, drawing his attention to her hands and head and then kicked him as hard as she could in the back of the knee where she knew the armor joint was open at the back, felling him. Taren grabbed his weapon and tossed it off the porch as Nora leaned down, grasping the unfortunate man at the neck.

"I'm sorry." She said, and then bashed his head hard against the porch floor twice, knocking him unconscious.

Already, she could hear the others coming, and so they raced towards the horses. She grasped the reins and swung up into the saddle, making sure that Taren had been able to do the same, and then dug in her heels. They raced out of the fence and down the road just in time to see the other templars spill out onto their porch and find they were too late.

~~0~~

The farm was a loss. They were homeless again, but they were lucky to all be free and uninjured and Anders counted that as a victory. Nora and Taren had been able to lead the templars a long chase before abandoning the horses and doubling back to the meeting spot an hour or so before dawn. The relief he had felt to see her bound into the clearing was immeasurable. It still left the issue of what they should do now that there were templars very close on their heels, and that came with an even more difficult question of its own.

"I've been thinking." Nora said one evening several days later. She had been quiet and aloof ever since the incident at the farm, and Anders was worried about her, "It's going to be difficult from here on out. It won't be safe for Anders and I to stay in one place for long. They're after me as well as him. I think…"

She hesitated for a moment. Whatever she was thinking, it was obviously difficult for her, and Anders reached out and laid a hand in hers, surreptitiously.

"I think that it would be best if Anders and I went on alone." She finished.

"Nora…"

"No, Bethany." She said, shaking her head, brooking no argument, "I've thought a lot about this and I mean it this time. It's too dangerous. We're all too big of a moving target for them to miss indefinitely. Someone is going to get killed if this continues. They're looking for Anders and me, not the four of you. With the way things are, you have a good chance of going unnoticed if you keep to the countryside and stay out of sight. You might even be able to go back to the farm when things calm down a little."

"The last time we split up, I got shipped off to the Circle, remember?" Bethany said, folding her arms in anger.

"I don't want this life for you." Nora replied, quietly, "Even Mother and Father got to stay in one place for a while sometimes. Mother is gone and so is Carver. You're the only blood family I have left and I would never forgive myself if something happened to you because of me."

"Then you'll just have to stay and keep an eye on me, won't you?"

Nora shook her head, firmly, her brow creasing in stubbornness and in pain.

"Anders, talk some sense into her." Bethany said, turning to him and he sighed. He didn't want to admit it, but he had been thinking something similar. It was one thing to endanger your own life. It was another to allow someone else to endanger themselves on your behalf.

"I think it's for the best." He said, and felt Nora squeeze his hand. Bethany snorted, and glared at both of them.

"I agree." Faelan added, after a moment.

"What?" Bethany fumed, whirling on him.

The quiet mage cleared his throat and looked frankly between Nora and Anders, before turning to Bethany.

"We all know that a group of mages attracts attention." He said, reasonably, "If the templars are tracking Anders and your sister, then their presence is putting us in danger…but we're also putting them in danger by creating a bigger, slower group for the templars to track. I don't want to see any of us hurt."

"No." Bethany said, petulantly, tears starting in her eyes, "We've stayed together this long. We can do this…"

"Some things can't be done, heart. And sometimes they shouldn't be." Faelan said gently, "I think you know that."

"I don't care!"

Conversation was stunted for the rest of the night. Bethany refused to speak to anyone and would not even share Faelan's pallet, electing to sleep alone, with only Merie curled up against her as comfort. Nora sat up late, staring into the fire, and Anders knew enough about her by now to let her be alone with her thoughts for a while. So, he kissed her and curled up in their blankets, dozing, waiting. Hours later, he felt her hand on his back and turned to see her kneeling beside him, dressed, armored, with her sword over her shoulder and an unreadable expression on her face. He did not have to ask what she was going to do.

~~0~~

Daylight found them crossing the southern highway and into the beginnings of the rocky wilderness that bordered the Korcari Wilds. It was too dangerous to risk traveling on a main road, and they had no particular destination, besides. Nora forged onward without stopping, almost feverishly, saying nothing and barely looking anywhere but directly in front of her. It was as if she felt compelled to put as many miles between them and the others as possible. Even if they wanted to, Bethany and Faelan could not have found them, not knowing which way they had traveled, and Anders was beginning to get seriously worried about his beloved's state of mind. Nora had not slept in more than twenty-four hours by now. She had spent most of the previous day running, trying to get away from the pursuing templars. He could see the strain in her face and body, even if she wouldn't let herself feel it. She needed to rest, but she would not stop and ignored his suggestions to that effect.

They were picking their way across gully when the gravely soil crumbled under Nora's feet and she fell, sliding down to the bottom. He hurried down after her and found her wincing, clutching at her ankle through her thick boot.

"Let me look at it." He said, and she tried to brush him off.

"I'm fine." She said, brusquely, trying to rise and falling back with a fierce, frustrated scowl of pain.

"No, you're not." He said, and grabbed her shoulders as she tried to rise again, "Nora. Stop."

Her expression wavered for a moment and then seemed to collapse in on itself. She buried her face in her hands and began to cry. Bitter, wrenching sobs welled up from within her where they had been building for a long time and he knew it was not her ankle she was crying about. He pulled her into his arms and held her for a long time.

"It's going to be alright." He told her, when her tears had faded into miserable shivering, "Faelan and Taren are resourceful. They'll take care of Bethany. When the shock wears off, she'll know it was the right thing. We did the right thing."

"How do you know?"

"Because I know you." He said. They camped there for the night, and in the morning, when her ankle was stable enough to walk on, they set out for the Wilds, where they could hide most easily and endanger the fewest.

~~0~~

Two months later, Nora found herself tracking a particularly large pod of darkspawn through the Wilds with Anders. King Alistair had declared a bounty on the roving stragglers that were left after the Blight, and there was good coin to be made. They were nomads now, but even wanderers needed money to live off of and it was something to do as they tried to work out what came next.

She would not go back to Kirkwall, ever, even if Cullen's offer of amnesty was still on the table. There were too many ghosts there waiting for her, and she had begun to realize the full scope and depth of what they had set off. Thedas was in uproar, and the Chantry was looking for any way possible to contain the damage. She didn't feel like being a ceremonial pawn in someone else's chess match, and so she stayed one step ahead of the templars and the various agents who were out looking for them. Even her communiqués with Varric could be intercepted and so she kept silent and hoped for her friends' safety, wherever they were. Of Bethany she knew little, except that a letter had finally caught up with her, care of Varric's contacts, in newly rebuilt Lothering. She had not read it, unable to bear what she might find inside, but had stuffed it into her pack and kept it with her. It was enough to know her sister was alive and well enough to write. She would read it some day.

"There are two dozen of them at least." Anders said, as they bellied up a rise to get a look at their prey, "Big stakes for us."

"At ten gold a head, that's enough to keep us in bread and kippers for awhile." She replied, and they began to plan their attack.

Anders was looking scruffier than usual these days, but such was life on the road and she found she preferred it, in a way. Life had taken a toll on her as well. Looking at her face in the smooth surface of a pond, she could see only a little of the idealistic girl she had once been beneath the scars of that last, terrible battle and the lines of world-weariness that were just beginning to show.

"You're still the most beautiful woman in the world to me." Anders had told her, and grinned when she gave him a look, "Would I lie to a woman with a sword who shares my bed at night?"

As they moved into position to start their assault on the darkspawn, Nora thought she caught a brief flash of blue through the trees, but could see nothing else before the fight began in earnest. Anders' fireball took out a large portion of the mindless beasts to start with, and she launched into the fray, carving her way through the remainder. It was not long before she realized there was another on the field, a flash of blue cloth, blonde hair, and steel.

When she had cleaved through the last of the spawn, as the dust and blood mist settled around them, Nora found herself facing another woman across the swampy ground. She seemed to be of a similar age, tall, well-built, with a noble air, but bearing a long, ragged scar across her face. She wore the blue and grey livery of the Grey Wardens, but the symbol on the shield that was strapped to her arm was that of the royal house of Ferelden.

She and the Warden regarded each other, wordlessly, for a moment, and then the woman looked past her over her shoulder as Anders moved up beside her and smiled. There was recognition in that smile. A sharp bark sounded from nearby and a mabari, graying slightly at the muzzle and around the eyes, bounded up to the Warden's side. She reached down and scratched the huge dog's ears affectionately and the animal's tongue lolled out in pleasure. Beyond her, the figures of several other Wardens appeared from the trees and a name was called, though Nora could not catch it on the breeze. The woman glanced at her comrades, and then turned back to Nora, her smile broadening slightly, a strange feeling of kinship passing in the air between them. There was a lifetime of struggle and secrets, hurt and triumph in those eyes. It was like looking into a mirror.

The call came again, and, without having said a word, the Grey Warden nodded amiably, turned, and trotted back up the hill to join her brethren in arms, her mabari at her heels. Nora watched the woman, her soul's twin, her other-self, until the she disappeared among the trees and felt, in some unknowable way, that everything was going to turn out alright after all.

* * *

><p><em>I've really had fun writing this story, although quite honestly it felt like the characters were writing themself most of the time. When I created my Hawke in the game, I sort of envisioned her as a "paladin"-like character, concerned with doing the right things and helping people, the sort of person who doesn't want power or influence, but ultimately has it dropped on them because no one else will take up the banner. In the end, like the Roman general Cincinnatus, she knows she has to remove herself from power in order to let the world solve it's own problems. At the same time, I wanted her to feel like a deeply human character, with all the foibles that Bioware doesn't really let you see well in the game: the fears, the guilt, and the strained moments. The title "Fallen" comes from Hawke's own perception of herself throughout the story, as a fallen hero and someone who strayed from the right path. Unlike the Hero of Ferelden, who in this version of the story married Alistair and became queen while still serving as a Grey Warden, Nora feels like the dark twin, the failed hero. I thought it was important at the end to put her face to face with her complement and have her realize that their stories aren't so dissimilar after all. I also liked the idea of Hawke being a de facto templar. It made the relationship between her and Anders more interesting and I got the feeling from my envisioning of the character that it was a vocation she had considered anyway.<em>

_I plan to go back and write more about this Hawke's story leading up to the events here. I'm definitely thinking about exploring her friendship with Cullen a little more, and probably her early relationship wtih Fenris as well. So, I hope you've enjoyed this story and that you continue reading. Thanks!_


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